[OPEN-ILS-DEV] API question

[Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 6:12 PM, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
> [...] Basically, Evergreen's 'end user'
> API is in the form of web page (I guess Evergreen is just providing some
> CGI-ish scripts that hook into its database).  It is fairly straight forward
> to write a browser plugin (using XUL/JavaScript) to issue browser HTTP/HTTPS
> requests.
>

This is not correct.

Evergreen's business logic is largely implemented in methods that are
accessed through a scalable message-passing framework called OpenSRF.
Methods are grouped into services, some of which are public and can be
accessed through HTTP, and some of which are private and are only for
Evergreen to talk to itself on a private network.

See here for a synopsis of some of the high-level APIs you can access
and how: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.libraries.open-ils.general/8083


It sounds like the problem that Bryan wants to tackle can be broken
down into 1) find a record that matches a given title, and 2) place a
hold on that record.  These subproblems must be broken down further of
course (what do you want to do when you find many records matching
your title? at what stage will you authenticate to the ILS so that
you're authorized to make hold requests? etc), but they can all be
addressed using Evergreen APIs.

Bryan, I would recommend the #evergreen channel on irc.freenode.net
for live contact with the Evergreen community, including developers.
And while there may not be all the documentation one could hope for to
make such a project as yours as easy as possible, perhaps you'd be
willing to help out our documentation by writing about what you learn
as you go?

Regards,

Lebbeous

> The extension is available for download at
>
> http://www.deepsoft.com/LibraryToolbar/libraryfftoolbar-1.0.3.xpi
>
> It is specific to the C/W Mars and Wendell Free Library, although can
> probably be trivially adapted to any C/W Mars library. And can probably be
> modified for another library system (one would need to change some constants
> in the JavaScript and/or the XUL -- the URL used to POST the search request
> and the vaules used for some of the drop down menus).
>
>>
>> Thanks
>> --B
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
> Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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-- 
Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley
 | Senior Software Developer
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
 | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
 | email:  lebbeous at esilibrary.com
 | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com