ISBN-Tools for Ruby

This library provides the ability to manipulate ISBN numbers. It knows about ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 numbers, has the ability to check if they are valid and convert from one format to the other. It can, of course, compute the check digit of both formats.

Finally, it has the ability to hyphenate ISBN numbers for the following group identifiers: 0, 1 and 2. Note that only hyphenation methods need to know about ranges, so all others methods (validity, checksum computations and number conversions) can be used with ISBN numbers from any group.

Other ranges could be added on request but I would need samples ISBN to check the result.

Usage

require 'rubygems'
require 'isbn/tools'

isbn_good = "2800107766"
isbn_bad = "2810107766"

def check_and_hyphenate(isbn)
  if ISBN_Tools.is_valid?(isbn)
    puts ISBN_Tools.hyphenate(isbn)
  else
    cksum = ISBN_Tools.compute_check_digit(isbn)
    puts "Invalid ISBN number [#{isbn}]. Checksum should be #{cksum}"
  end
end

check_and_hyphenate isbn_good # => 2-8001-0776-6
check_and_hyphenate isbn_bad  # => Invalid ISBN number [2810107766]. Checksum should be 9

Copyright

Copyright

2006, Thierry Godfroid

The following sources were used in order to understand ISBN numbers and how to manipulate them. No books were harmed in the process.

• www.isbn-international.org

• “Are You Ready for ISBN-13?” www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/transition.asp. Note that at the bottom of this page, you can find a link towards a small book “ISBN-13 for Dummies”, available as PDF (www.bisg.org/isbn-13/ISBN13_For_Dummies.pdf)

• Structure of an ISBN number www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/international/html/usm4.htm

Ranges information was found at www.isbn-international.org/en/identifiers.html.

LICENCE NOTE

MIT-Style license. See LICENCE file in this distribution.

Requirements

ISBN-Tools requires Ruby 1.8.2 or better.

Known bugs/Limitations

• This release code only allows for one-digit groups.

• See also the TODO file in this distribution