Book Recommender Basic

A simple Flask application that uses the Google Books API to recommend similar books based on a query.

Author: Timothy Johnson
Date: January 2026

Overview

Book Recommender Basic is a lightweight Flask application that provides book recommendations by querying the Google Books API. It searches for books similar to a given title and returns formatted recommendations through a simple web interface.

✨ Features

🔍 Smart Book Search

• Enhanced Query Processing: Searches for "books like [query]" instead of exact matches
• Intelligent Filtering: Automatically excludes the exact book from search results
• Results Curation: Returns up to 10 relevant similar books

📚 Structured Book Information

• Comprehensive Data: Extracts titles, authors, categories, and descriptions
• Formatted Output: Presents clean, readable book information
• Description Snippets: Provides concise 100-character book descriptions

🔌 API Endpoints

• Interactive Homepage: Web interface with test links
• Test Endpoint: GET endpoint for quick testing
• Recommendation Endpoint: POST endpoint for structured recommendations

🧰 Technologies Used

🌐 Backend Framework

• Flask - Python web framework
• Requests - HTTP library for API calls

📊 External APIs

• Google Books API - Book search and metadata

🎨 Frontend & UI

• HTML5 - Web page structure
• Flask Templating - Dynamic content rendering

🔧 Development Tools

• Python 3 - Programming language
• JSON - Data interchange format

📊 API Endpoints

Endpoint	Method	Description	Parameters
/	GET	Homepage with test links	None
/test	GET	Test book search	book (query parameter)
/recommend	POST	Get book recommendations	JSON: {"book": "Book Title"}

🆚 How It Works

Step	Process	Example
1. Input	User provides a book title	"Harry Potter"
2. Query Enhancement	Converts to "books like [title]"	"books like Harry Potter"
3. API Search	Searches Google Books API	Returns 15 initial results
4. Filtering	Removes exact matches	Filters out "Harry Potter" books
5. Recommendation	Selects specific results	Top pick, genre variations

📁 Code Structure

book-recommender-basic/
├── app.py # Main Flask application
├── requirements.txt # Python dependencies
└── README.md # Project documentation

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.6+
• Flask
• Requests library

Installation

1. Clone and setup:

   git clone https://github.com/MrTimmyJ/book-recommender-basic.git
   cd book-recommender-basic

2. Install dependencies:

   Create and activate virtual environment

   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate # Mac/Linux
   venv\Scripts\activate # Windows

   Install Flask

   pip install flask requests

3. Run application:

   python app.py

🪪 License

© 2026 Timothy Johnson. All Rights Reserved.
This project and its code may not be copied, modified, or reused without permission.