Migrate reading-list and book-review tooling from the retired Goodreads API to the Hardcover GraphQL API
domain: hardcover.app · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Confirm Goodreads stopped issuing new developer API keys on December 8, 2020, and do not plan new integrations against the legacy Goodreads API.
As a maintained alternative, get a Hardcover API token from your account settings at hardcover.app/account/api.
Query the GraphQL endpoint at https://api.hardcover.app/v1/graphql, sending the token in an authorization header, from a backend/server context only (in-browser use is explicitly disallowed).
Use GraphQL queries against schemas like books, editions, userBooks, and lists to replicate former Goodreads use cases such as shelving and reviews.
Design for the API's beta constraints: a 60 requests/minute rate limit, a maximum query depth of 3, and tokens that auto-expire yearly, resetting each January 1.
Known gotchas
The Hardcover API is explicitly in beta -- schema and behavior 'could break in the future,' and tokens can be reset without notice.
Under current policy, queries are limited to your own user data, public data, and data of users you follow -- it is not a full open replica of all catalog data.
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