book-search

Search for books using Kyobo Book Centre's comprehensive online catalog.

Quick Start

Use the search script to find books by any keyword:

import subprocess
result = subprocess.run(['python', 'scripts/search_books.py', 'keyword'], 
                       capture_output=True, text=True, cwd='book-search')
print(result.stdout)

Script Location

The search script is located at skills/book-search/scripts/search_books.py relative to the application working directory. IMPORTANT: Always use the FULL path skills/book-search/scripts/search_books.py — do NOT shorten to scripts/search_books.py.

Features

• Keyword Search: Find books by title, author, topic, or any relevant term
• Korean & English Support: Search in both Korean and English
• Top Results: Returns up to 5 most relevant books
• Direct Links: Provides direct URLs to book pages for purchase
• Error Handling: Graceful handling of network issues and parsing errors

Usage Examples

Basic Search

# Search for programming books
result = subprocess.run(['python', 'scripts/search_books.py', '프로그래밍'], 
                       capture_output=True, text=True, cwd='book-search')

Author Search

# Search by author name
result = subprocess.run(['python', 'scripts/search_books.py', '무라카미 하루키'], 
                       capture_output=True, text=True, cwd='book-search')

Topic Search

# Search by topic
result = subprocess.run(['python', 'scripts/search_books.py', 'artificial intelligence'], 
                       capture_output=True, text=True, cwd='book-search')

Implementation Notes

• Uses web scraping with proper User-Agent headers
• Handles URL encoding for special characters
• Returns formatted results with titles and purchase links
• Limited to top 5 results to avoid overwhelming output
• Includes error handling for network and parsing issues

Dependencies

The script requires:

• requests - for HTTP requests
• beautifulsoup4 - for HTML parsing
• urllib.parse - for URL encoding (built-in)

Install dependencies:

pip install requests beautifulsoup4