Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published.

• Overview
• Installation
• Code Organization
• Architecture
  • The Frontend
  • The Backend
  • The Service Architecture
• Developer's Guide
• Running Tests
• Contributing
• Public APIs
• FAQs
• License

Open Library is an effort started in 2006 to create "one web page for every book ever published". It provides access to many public domain and out-of-print books, which can be read online.

• Learn more about the Open Library project
• The Vision (Dream) of OpenLibrary
• Visit the Blog

We're supporting Docker, moving forward. If you are a new contributor, especially on linux, please consider setting up using the Docker Instructions.

Our Docker environment is in active development. Want to contribute? Here's our top-level Docker todo-list and a list of open Docker issues.

For instructions on administrating your Open Library instance and build instructions for developers, refer the Developer's Quickstart Guide.

You can also find more information regarding Developer Documentation for Open Library in the Open Library Wiki

• openlibrary/core - core openlibrary functionality, imported and used by www
• openlibrary/plugins - other models, controllers, and view helpers
• openlibrary/views - views for rendering web pages
• openlibrary/templates - all the templates used in the website
• openlibrary/macros - macros are like templates, but can be called from wikitext

OpenLibrary is developed on top of the Infogami wiki system, which is itself built on top of the web.py Python web framework and the Infobase database framework.

• Overview of Backend Web Technologies

Once you've read the overview of OpenLibrary Backend technologies, it's highly encouraged you read the developer primer which explains how to use Infogami (and its database, Infobase):

• Infogami Developer Tutorial

Open Library tests can be run using pytest. Kindly look up on our Testing Document for more details

Run tests while the docker container is running

cd docker/
docker-compose exec web make test

Integration tests use the Splinter webdriver with Google Chrome. For instructions on installation requirements and running integration tests, see Integration Tests README