Problems scanning ISBN with iPhone versus iPad

rbrpt

Good morning to all,

I have some problems when adding books to my library using my iPhone. In some cases, scanning an ISBN bar code with my iPhone returns a “Failed” search, but if I scan the same bar code with my iPad everything works just fine. Examples are the ISBNs 9788815295866, Titanic naufragio o cambio di rotta per l'ordine liberale; 9782080712943, Les liaisons dangereuses; and 9780241982495, We were eight years in power: an American tragedy.

I would appreciate if someone could tell me why I have this problem. For obvious reasons, I would rather use my iPhone instead of the iPad, as I want to create a library of books I would like to purchase, and I generally find them at various bookstores when I do not have the iPad with me.

To focus the troubleshooting, there are few issues I searched and excluded by myself:

1. All the books were properly listed in WorldCat, that I believe is Zotero’s first stop when looking for books;
2. Both the iPhone and the iPad have the same version of Zotero that is also the latest;
3. As highlighted by the examples, this problem does not occur only with “foreign” (to the US) books, as the last example, *We were eight years in power: an American tragedy*, is a US book; finally,
4. Network connectivity can be excluded, as both devices were connected to my home network when I was doing the data entry.

Thanks for your help

Roberto

mvasilak

Can you please also let us know which exactly version of the app you have installed, and which iOS/iPadOS version on each device? Additionally, start a debug log in the settings, then scan the barcode, and when this succeeds or fails, stop the debug log and copy and share its id here. Please do this for both devices.

rbrpt

Hi @mvasilak,

The version of Zotero (1.0.54 Build 394) and the iOS versions (18.6.2) are the same on both my iPhone 13 Model no A2633 (MLPF3KH/A) and my iPad(A16) (Model no. A3354 (MD4Y4LL/D).

The debug log for my iPhone was D677080313 and that for my iPad was D902710629. The Failed ISBNs (on iPhone but not iPad) were 9780006551058, 9788807493850, 9788830106284, and 9781848311350.

Best

Roberto

mvasilak

The iPhone's IP seems to be blocked by Cloudflare, for the translator that actually translates the ISBN, while iPad doesn't have this issue. Can you try scanning from the iPhone, but from another network, and send a debug log from this one as well, if unsuccessful?

rbrpt

After you said Cloudflare was blocking my iPhone’s IP I believe I understood the problem, but I would appreciate you confirming my suspicions. On my iPhone I run NordVPN, but not on my iPad, so I believe Cloudflare interprets my IP as suspicious. To confirm, I have performed a debug search with VPN on (debug log no. D1563596092) and with the VPN off (debug log no. D799221464). In the latter case I was able to find books that before gave me a “Failed” answer.

Could you please confirm that is correct and the problem is the VPN? Thanks

Roberto

adamsmith

Cloudfare would be the only people who could definitely confirm this, but almost certainly, yes.

mvasilak

Hey @rbpt, indeed this is the case, the first log has the same issue, here is the response text with IP & Cloudflare Ray ID redacted:

"""
Attention Required! | Cloudflare

Please enable cookies.

Sorry, you have been blocked
You are unable to access worldcat.org

Why have I been blocked?
This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.
The action you just performed triggered the security solution.
There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting
a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

What can I do to resolve this?
You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked.
Please include what you were doing when this page came up
and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.

Cloudflare Ray ID: REDACTED
Your IP: REDACTED
Performance & security by Cloudflare
"""