Information for developers

First of all: Our CD-Archive is accessible and free for everybody!

The use of this CD-archive is free. We charge absolutely no fee, you don't need to subscribe a contract and you are not under any obligation to us. We furthermore promise that we won't change this in the future!

If you are developer of a CD-player or any other program and want to use our CD-archive, you're welcome! The only requirement for you is to tell us. Please use this registration form to get access to the CD-database. 

Additionally we want to ask you for one thing: if you're a developer, please give a small hint to our CD-archive somewhere in your program (best in the about-box). Of course this is no duty, but we would be very happy about it. Keeping up and widening the data is a lot of work, and we think that a small hint and/or an URL in your program is not an unreasonable demand, is it?  :o)

For the people in a hurry here a text, which can be taken over by "Copy&Paste":

CD-archive is a free service by Big 3 Software, Gebr. Schmitz GbR.
You'll find further information to the CD-archive at www.cdarchiv.de.

The are two ways to access the CD-Archive.

1. Access the CD-Archive via the cdarchiv.dll
2. Access the CD-Archive via manual HTTP-Requests

The CDArchiv.dll

The CDArchiv.dll offers developers an open interface to the CDArchiv Server. Herewith developers are able to access a big amount of CD information and send in new CDs. The CDArchiv.dll can be used by any common programming language.

Download CDArchiv.dll Version 1.1 (incl. MS Visual C++ 6.0 example)
Documentation of CDArchiv.dll Version 1.1

Access the CD-Archive manually

In this paragraph we will give you a short introduction in using the CD-Archive with HTTP-Requests. With this method you are able to do queries in the CD-Archive. You can not send new CDs or update existing ones. If you want to do this you have to use the CDArchiv.dll.

All you have to do to query the CD-Archive is to send a HTTP-Command to the Webserver (www.cdarchiv.de). Let's start with a little example (just click the link below to see a test-access.)

http://www.cdarchiv.de/cdquery.asp?User=test&password=test&ID=13433759

The parameters user/password are necessary to identify the application accessing the CD-Archive. Insert the password and username you received from us.
ID is the unique ID (Identity) the Windows CD-Audio driver calculates for the CD in your CD-ROM drive. It can be read out via the related Windows API-Function. Here's a short example in C:

// Open the related CD-ROM Device here!
...
MCI_INFO_PARMS mip;
char szIdentity[20]

memset(&mip, 0, sizeof(mip));
mip.lpstrReturn = szIdentity;
mip.dwRetSize = sizeof(szIdentity);

ret = mciSendCommand(Handle, MCI_INFO, MCI_INFO_MEDIA_IDENTITY, (DWORD)&mip);
// In szIdentity you can find the Identity of the inserted Audio CD.
...

As a result from the query to the CDArchiv you will receive a HTML-Page which you have to parse from within your program. The structure of the page is held very simple so it is easy to analyse. The format is extendable so if you write a parser for it all you have to do in further versions is to add the treatment for the new fields. You have to read in the answer from the CDArchiv line by line.

Each line has the following format:

{field}={content}<br>\r\n

The part "<BR>\r\n" is just for a better readability from within the browser or the source of the page. You should ignore them when interpreting the result.

The following fields are supported at the moment:

The length of the string-types is a maximum.

Most fields contain reasonable data for every CD. Some of the fields will only be in the answer to your query if they contain data. This is for saving bandwidth. In general all fields should be initialized with zero.

If you have further questions about implementation in your programs feel free to drop us a line.

 

Stand: 09.07.2006