Grab records from a CSV file to do lookups against the Virtual International Authority File

gistfile1.py

import csv
import re
import time
import string
import sys
import urllib
import urllib2

import pymarc

PUNC_RE = re.compile('[%s]' % string.punctuation)
VIAF_URL = 'http://orlabs.oclc.org/viaf/'
QUERY_BASE = VIAF_URL + 'search/VIAF?query=local.personalName+all+'
QUERY_PARAMS = '+&version=1.1&maximumRecords=100&operation=searchRetrieve&stylesheet=/viaf/xsl/Results.xsl&sortKeys=holdingscount&recordSchema=BriefMarcXML'

def normalize(instr):
	return urllib.quote_plus(re.sub(PUNC_RE, ' ', instr).strip())

def grab_response(name):
	"""docstring for grab_response"""
	url = '%s%%22%s%%22%s' % (QUERY_BASE, normalize(name), QUERY_PARAMS)
	#print url
	response = urllib.urlopen(url)
	return response

def do_it(r):
	r_ = u''
	r_ = unicode(r.__str__())
	print r_.encode("utf-8", 'ignore')
	
def is_not_none(n):
	return n is not None
	
def grab_auth(identifier):
	"""grab viaf authority record"""
	url = VIAF_URL + identifier
	#print url
	auth = urllib.urlopen(url)
	return auth
	
#_ = input('String to grab:')
reader = csv.DictReader(file(sys.argv[1], 'rU'))
writer = csv.writer(file(sys.argv[2], 'wt'))
writer.writerow(('InName', 'LOC', 'ParsedName', 'ParsedId'))
for row in reader:
	xh = pymarc.XmlHandler()
	inname = row['Uniform_Author_Name']
	lc = row['LOC']
	pymarc.parse_xml(grab_response(inname), xh)
	xh.records = filter(is_not_none, xh.records)
	for rec in xh.records:
		#print rec['001'].data
		try:
			identifier = rec['001'].data
			if identifier.startswith('LC'):
				pn = rec['100'].format_field()
				writer.writerow((inname, lc, pn, identifier))
				print "%s, %s, %s, %s" % (inname, lc, pn, identifier)
				break
			else:
				pass
		except:
			identifier = 'Fail'
			pn = 'Fail'
			writer.writerow((inname, lc, pn, identifier))
			print "%s, %s, %s, %s" % (inname, lc, pn, identifier)
		time.sleep(1)
writer.close()
#map(do_it, xh.records)

Would you mind making a couple of changes?

You point at orlabs.oclc.org. That's our experimental server. It would be better if you pointed at viaf.org, which is our production service. test.viaf.org is available, but is not as reliable and we do sometimes put up small experimental versions of the viaf database there.

You reference stylesheet Results.xsl. There's no such stylesheet and serverside rendering results in an internal 404 on that stylesheet and probably no response to your request. (It was in tracking down our internal 404 that I ran across your code.) If you change the reference to results.xsl, you should get better results.

Let me know if I can do anything to help.

Ralph

In the meantime, I've made a softlink for Results.xsl, so your code should stop failing.

Ralph

This is an old script that predates the production service - but I will try to find time to factor in your changes. Thanks!