OpenStax::Cnx

This gem provides a Ruby interface to OpenStax book content.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'openstax_cnx'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install openstax_cnx

Books are made up of BookParts and Pages. Every Book as a single top-level "root" BookPart. BookParts can contain other BookParts and Pages. Many OpenStax books are organized as pages within chapters. For these books the Ruby objects hierarchy looks like:

Book
  BookPart (the "root")
    Page (the "Preface")
    BookPart (Chapter 1)
      Page (Introduction)
      Page (Section 1.1)
      etc...
    BookPart (Chapter 2)
      Page (Introduction)
      etc...
    etc...

Some OpenStax books organize chapters into units. The units are BookParts like the chapters are:

Book
  BookPart (the "root")
    Page (the "Preface")
    BookPart (Unit 1)
      Page (Unit Introduction)
      BookPart (Chapter 1)
        Page (Introduction)
        Page (Section 1.1)
        etc...
      BookPart (Chapter 2)
        Page (Introduction)
        etc...
      etc...
    BookPart (Unit 2)
      etc ...

This gem gives you Ruby objects to navigate this hierarchy and access the metadata and content at each level. You start by creating a Book object given that book's UUID.

book = OpenStax::Cnx::V1.book(id: "031da8d3-b525-429c-80cf-6c8ed997733a")

Books have some metadata you can read out:

book.title # => "College Physics"
book.baked # => "2019-03-20T14:24:26.164476-05:00"
book.url   # => "https://archive.cnx.org/contents/031da8d3-b525-429c-80cf-6c8ed997733a"

To get all pages in a book:

book.root_book_part.pages.count   # => 460

To dig deeper, get the root_book_part and then is parts

book.root_book_part.is_root # => true
book.root_book_part.parts.count # => 40
book.root_book_part.parts.first.class # => OpenStax::Cnx::V1::Page
book.root_book_part.parts.first.title # => "Preface"
book.root_book_part.parts[2].class # => OpenStax::Cnx::V1::BookPart
book.root_book_part.parts[2].title # => "Kinematics"
book.root_book_part.parts[2].is_chapter? # => true
book.root_book_part.parts[2].parts.count # => 13
book.root_book_part.parts[2].parts[6].class # => OpenStax::Cnx::V1::Page
book.root_book_part.parts[2].parts[6].title # => "Problem-Solving Basics for One-Dimensional Kinematics"
book.root_book_part.parts[2].parts[6].baked_book_location # => ["2", "6"]
book.root_book_part.parts[2].parts[6].parsed_title # => {:text=>"Problem-Solving Basics for One-Dimensional Kinematics", :book_location=>["2", "6"]}

Note that a BookPart's parts array can contain both Pages and BookParts. The baked book location is the section number, e.g. above we see section 2.6.

You can run the above commands using the bin/console command in the gem directory.

You can override default gem configurations with the following:

OpenStax::Cnx::V1.configure do |config|
  # where to get the book content
  config.archive_url_base = "https://someurl.com" # default is "https://archive.cnx.org"
  # whether to ignore the book version history
  config.ignore_history = false # default is true
  # a logger
  config.logger = Rails.logger # default is a null logger
end

You can temporarily override the Archive URL with:

OpenStax::Cnx::V1.with_archive_url("https://archive-staging.cnx.org") do
  # your code here, will see the archive-staging url
end
# the original archive URL will be reset by this point

This is useful in tests where the content may not be on the production system.

The versions in this gem (e.g. the V1 in OpenStax::Cnx::V1::Book) are not versions of the CNX API, but rather just different ways of building models to access the CNX API. We made a V1 so that we could wildly change our mind later and add a V2 without impact V1 clients.

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/openstax_cnx. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Everyone interacting in the OpenstaxCnx project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.