#bookbrainz

I've finally had enough of not being able to enter ASIN's where the third digit is a letter. Can someone point me to the place in the source where the ASIN is verified? I'd like to fix it.

Hi jwillikers , the regular expressions used for identifier detection and validation are stored in the database.

Here's the ones used for ASIN: detection: `amazon\..*?/(?:\..*?/)*?(B\d{2}\w{7}|\d{9}[X\d])` and validation: `^(?:B\d{2}\w{7}|\d{9}[X\d])$`

If you come up with a fixed version you can post it here and tag me, and I will modify the database entry.

monkey: Just following up on my draft [proposal](https://community.metabrainz.org/t/gsoc-2025-proposal-for-new-calibre-plugin/752006). Still waiting for your valuable feedback for refinements...

It's on my list Ankit_Matth , no need for reminders :)

monkey[m]: Sorry for the unintended reminder, and thanks for your response!

<monkey[m]> "Hi jwillikers , the regular..." <- Is there some special significance for the ASIN starting with the letter B?

Perhaps it is specifically a book-related regex? I have to say I did not write it and have no info regarding its origin or reasoning

That being said, that also means the regex is fairly old and things very well could have changed since with their numbering system

I saw something about that on the web, but not sure it's reliable...

That was just a guess, who knows if it is (or still is)

I'll just go with what Wikidata uses for ASIN's

Sounds like a reasonable approach, might be worth checking against existing ASINs in the database too.

IIRC the ASIN regex for MBS has been updated a while ago, so we should better compare against that one as well.

Interesting! Do you know where they are stored, by any chance?

Nope, I am looking in Jira

He, there is BB-780 already

BB-780: “B0CQKH14BB” not recognised as valid ASIN https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/BB-780

Pending what MB has, here's what I've got, amazon\..*?/(?:\..*?/)*?([a-zA-Z\d]{10}) and for validation ^[a-zA-Z\d]{10}$

Here are the lines in MB codebase I see are related:

`([0-9B][0-9A-Z]{9})(?:[^0-9A-Z]|$)` from https://github.com/metabrainz/musicbrainz-serve... and another file

And this one from a "cat number looks like ASIN" report: https://github.com/metabrainz/musicbrainz-serve...

Perl for the first one, JS for the second

Validation and clean-up is here: https://github.com/metabrainz/musicbrainz-serve...

I do see the starting "B" int here, but also the catch-all below deosn't have it

(GitHub's blame feature refuses to work, so I didn't find out when it has been changed)

I think "B" was historically used for books without ISBN-10

And as Amazon expanded it became a weird mess 😁

I found info at a publisher's website about a book, it's various editions and the times it has been printed so far

Can I create a new edition for the various print dates based on the website?

Or should I only add books I own?