ReadMeABook/documentation/integrations/audible.md

Audible Integration

Status: ✅ Implemented (Audnexus API + Web Scraping)

Audiobook metadata from Audnexus API (primary) and Audible.com scraping (fallback) for discovery, search, and detail pages.

Detail Page Strategy

Primary: Audnexus API

• Endpoint: https://api.audnex.us/books/{asin}
• Structured JSON response (no parsing needed)
• Provides: title, authors, narrators, description, duration, rating, genres, cover art
• Free, no API key required
• ~95% success rate for popular audiobooks

Fallback: Audible Scraping

• Used when Audnexus returns 404
• Parse Audible HTML with Cheerio
• Multiple selector strategies with promotional text filtering
• Extract JSON-LD structured data when available

Region Configuration

Status: ✅ Implemented

Configurable Audible region for accurate metadata matching across different international Audible stores.

Supported Regions:

• United States (us) - audible.com (default)
• Canada (ca) - audible.ca
• United Kingdom (uk) - audible.co.uk
• Australia (au) - audible.com.au
• India (in) - audible.in

Why Regions Matter:

• Each Audible region uses different ASINs for the same audiobook
• Metadata engines (Audnexus/Audible Agent) in Plex/Audiobookshelf must match RMAB's region
• Mismatched regions cause poor search results and failed metadata matching

Configuration:

• Key: audible.region (stored in database)
• Default: us
• Set during: Setup wizard (Backend Selection step) or Admin Settings (Library tab)
• Help text instructs users to match their metadata engine region

Implementation:

• AudibleService loads region from config on initialization
• Dynamically builds base URL: AUDIBLE_REGIONS[region].baseUrl
• Audnexus API calls include region parameter: ?region={code}
• IP redirect prevention: ?ipRedirectOverride=true on all Audible requests
• Configuration service helper: getAudibleRegion() returns configured region
• Auto-detection of region changes: Service checks config before each request and re-initializes if region changed
• Cache clearing: When region changes, ConfigService cache and AudibleService initialization are cleared
• Automatic refresh: Changing region automatically triggers audible_refresh job to fetch new data

Files:

• Types: src/lib/types/audible.ts
• Service: src/lib/integrations/audible.service.ts
• Config: src/lib/services/config.service.ts
• API: src/app/api/admin/settings/audible/route.ts

Discovery Strategy (Popular/New/Search)

• Parse Audible HTML with Cheerio
• Multi-page scraping (20 items/page)
• Rate limit: max 10 req/min, 1.5s delay between pages
• Cache results in database (24hr TTL)

Data Sources

URLs dynamically built based on configured region:

1. Best Sellers: {baseUrl}/adblbestsellers
2. New Releases: {baseUrl}/newreleases
3. Search: {baseUrl}/search?keywords={query}&ipRedirectOverride=true
4. Detail Page: {baseUrl}/pd/{asin}?ipRedirectOverride=true
5. Audnexus API: https://api.audnex.us/books/{asin}?region={code}

Where {baseUrl} is determined by configured region (e.g., https://www.audible.co.uk for UK).

Metadata Extracted

• ASIN (Audible ID)
• Title, author, narrator
• Duration (minutes), release date, rating
• Description, cover art URL
• Genres/categories

Unified Matching (audiobook-matcher.ts)

Status: ✅ Production Ready

Single matching algorithm used everywhere (search, popular, new-releases, jobs).

Process:

1. Query DB candidates: audibleId exact match OR partial title+author match
2. If exact ASIN match → return immediately
3. Fuzzy match: title 70% + author 30% weights, 70% threshold
4. Return best match or null

Benefits:

• Real-time matching at query time (not pre-matched)
• Works regardless of job execution order
• Prevents duplicate plexGuid assignments
• Used by all APIs for consistency

Database-First Approach

Status: ✅ Implemented

Discovery APIs serve cached data from DB with real-time matching.

Flow:

1. audible_refresh job runs daily → fetches 200 popular + 200 new releases
2. Downloads and caches cover thumbnails locally (reduces Audible load)
3. Stores in DB with flags (isPopular, isNewRelease) and rankings
4. Cleans up unused thumbnails after sync
5. API routes query DB → apply real-time matching → return enriched results
6. Homepage loads instantly (no Audible API hits)

Thumbnail Caching

Status: ✅ Implemented

Cover images cached locally to reduce external requests and improve performance.

Features:

• Downloads covers during audible_refresh job
• Stores in /app/cache/thumbnails (Docker volume)
• Serves via /api/cache/thumbnails/[filename]
• Auto-cleanup of unused thumbnails
• Falls back to original URL if cache fails
• 24-hour browser cache headers

Implementation:

• Service: src/lib/services/thumbnail-cache.service.ts
• API Route: src/app/api/cache/thumbnails/[filename]/route.ts
• Storage: Docker volume cache mounted at /app/cache
• Filename: {asin}.{ext} (e.g., B08G9PRS1K.jpg)

API Endpoints:

GET /api/audiobooks/popular?page=1&limit=20 GET /api/audiobooks/new-releases?page=1&limit=20

Response:

{
  success: boolean;
  audiobooks: EnrichedAudibleAudiobook[];
  count: number;
  totalCount: number;
  page: number;
  totalPages: number;
  hasMore: boolean;
  lastSync: string | null; // ISO timestamp
  message?: string; // if no data
}

Data Models

interface AudibleAudiobook {
  asin: string;
  title: string;
  author: string;
  narrator?: string;
  description?: string;
  coverArtUrl?: string;
  durationMinutes?: number;
  releaseDate?: string;
  rating?: number;
  genres?: string[];
}

interface EnrichedAudibleAudiobook extends AudibleAudiobook {
  availabilityStatus: 'available' | 'requested' | 'unknown';
  isAvailable: boolean;
  plexGuid: string | null;
  dbId: string;
}

Tech Stack

• axios (HTTP)
• cheerio (HTML parsing)
• Redis (caching, optional)
• Database (PostgreSQL)
• string-similarity (matching)

Fixed Issues

Search returning empty results (2026-01-07)

• Problem: Audible changed HTML structure for search results from .productListItem to .s-result-item
• Impact: All search queries returned 0 results
• Fix: Updated search() method to support both .s-result-item (current) and .productListItem (legacy)
• Selectors updated:
  • Main: .s-result-item, .productListItem
  • Title: h2 (new) or h3 a (legacy)
  • Author: a[href*="/author/"] (new) or .authorLabel (legacy)
  • Narrator: a[href*="searchNarrator="] (new) or .narratorLabel (legacy)
  • Runtime: span:contains("Length:") (new) or .runtimeLabel (legacy)
  • Rating: .a-icon-star span (new) or .ratingsLabel (legacy)
• Location: src/lib/integrations/audible.service.ts:235

Some audiobooks missing from search results (2026-01-07)

• Problem: ASIN extraction only matched /pd/ URLs but some audiobooks use /ac/ URLs
• Impact: Books like "Beatitude" by DJ Krimmer (ASIN: B0DVH7XL36) were skipped
• Fix: Updated ASIN regex to match both /pd/ and /ac/ URL patterns: /\/(?:pd|ac)\/[^\/]+\/([A-Z0-9]{10})/
• Location: src/lib/integrations/audible.service.ts:75, 161, 240
• Affects: getPopularAudiobooks(), getNewReleases(), search() methods