[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Javascript libraries - documentation?

[Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley]

Hello Linda,

** The following is a general outline of how to reach Evergreen API
methods.  For your specific question about ISBNs, skip to the bottom
of my e-mail. **

Much of Evergreen's business logic is available through the registered
API methods of several OpenSRF applications.  Instead of
Evergreen-specific Javascript libraries, the way to access these is to
use the OpenSRF javascript libraries best explained by documentation
here:
http://evergreen-ils.org/opensrf.php#opensrf_development  (thanks to Dan Scott).

As for the API methods themselves, they have documentation which is
often helpful in telling you at least enough about the expected
parameters that you can experiment.  If you would rather not look in
the Evergreen source code for that documentation, there is an easier
way to find it by consulting any appropriately configured Evergreen
server in this way:
http://demo.evergreencatalog.com/opac/extras/docgen.xsl

In the 'application' field, enter any of these:

opensrf.math
open-ils.actor
open-ils.acq
open-ils.auth
open-ils.booking
open-ils.serial
open-ils.cat
open-ils.circ
open-ils.collections
open-ils.fielder *
open-ils.pcrud *
open-ils.reporter
open-ils.search
open-ils.supercat
open-ils.url_verify
open-ils.vandelay

And then check the "All methods" checkbox before clicking submit,
except for the applications I have marked with an asterisk (*).  These
applications have tons of dynamically generated methods, and so the
retrieving documentation for all of them may be very slow.

In this way you can explore the API documentation for all methods of
the publicly available applications (we also call the applications
"services" sometimes) of an Evergreen system.

The demo system I have linked to is somewhat dated, at version 2.2 RC1
of Evergreen, but system administrators can find docgen.xsl in the
OpenSRF source code repository and deploy it on any site running the
Evergreen version of their choice.

Now, having explained all that, for your specific task of retriving
ISBNs from a set of search results, I don't know that you'll find a
suitable API method to do exactly that for you.  However, there are
other ways to access Evergreen.

It has nothing to do with Javascript per se, but I would use
Evergreen's OpenSearch API to perform a search and return a feed of
MODS records.  Example:
http://demo.evergreencatalog.com/opac/extras/opensearch/1.1/-/mods3?searchTerms=harry+potter&searchClass=keyword

You will notice that the resulting XML document contains many
instances of <identifier type="isbn"> tags. You can parse the
collection of MODS records with available XML libraries for any
programming language, including Javascript, and pick out the ISBN tags
you're interested in.

I hope this helps!

Lebbeous


On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 7:28 AM, Linda Jansova <skolkova at chello.cz> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Could you please advise us where to find some documentation to Evergreen
> javascript libraries? We are trying to retrieve isbns of search results via
> a javascript call but we could neither find a relevant function, nor a
> Javascript API description.
>
> Thank you for any hints!
>
> Linda Jansova



-- 
Lebbeous Fogle-Weekley
 | 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