February 2023 - Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

ChatGPT and Koha
by David Cook 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi all, Like many around the world, I may have been bitten by the ChatGPT bug. Most of my ChatGPT questions have been more general in nature, but I figured I'd ask it about Koha, as there is a lot of public information, but it's still a niche topic. I asked it to generate me a Koha plugin, and it refused for a while, but eventually I was able to convince it to try. The result wouldn't even compile, but it got a lot of things right. In other conversations, it's made mistakes but always done a good job of fixing its mistakes. Has anyone else played with ChatGPT and Koha or ChatGPT in general (on IT topics)? David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595

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Testing ERM functionality
by David Cook 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi Jonathan and folks, Is there a general test plan that can be used for testing ERM functionality? Should/could koha-testing-docker come with some test data for ERM to ease testing? Here's my first look (in a very long time): 1. Go to http://localhost:8081/cgi-bin/koha/admin/preferences.pl?tab=erm 2. Change "ERMModule" to "Enable" 3. Go to http://localhost:8081/cgi-bin/koha/erm/erm.pl I note the following warning in the console: runtime-core.esm-bundler.js:167 [Vue warn]: setup() return property "_is_loading" should not start with "$" or "_" which are reserved prefixes for Vue internals. at <Main> -- In a separate email, I've asked what I should be looking for in terms of QA. Or are we still at a stage of looking for feedback? Personally, I think that we might still be a bit too ERM focused with the Vue.js. Instead of http://localhost:8081/cgi-bin/koha/erm/erm.pl perhaps we should be going to http://localhost:8081/cgi-bin/koha/spa/erm. Note that "spa" is a placeholder here (in this case standing for single page application). Off the top of my head, I don't have a great base URL in mind. That way "Koha" is the Vue.js app, and "ERM" is a component provided to "Koha". We could centralize a number of methods in the root "Koha" app. Actually, me emailing is probably pointless. Maybe one night I can do some work in the evening, so that I can link up with folk and we can chat more. David Cook Senior Software Engineer Prosentient Systems Suite 7.03 6a Glen St Milsons Point NSW 2061 Australia Office: 02 9212 0899 Online: 02 8005 0595

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Vue improvements/refactorings
by Jonathan Druart 22 Feb '23

22 Feb '23

Hi, Pedro and I have been working on improving the way we request the Koha REST API from Vue components. We ended up with the implementation that is available on the following remote branch: https://gitlab.com/joubu/Koha/-/commits/bug_32925 It contains the patches from the following bug reports: *Bug 32898* <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=32898> - Cypress tests are failing *Bug 32923* <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=32923> - x-koha-embed must a header of collectionFormat csv *Bug 32806* <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=32806> - Some Vue files need to be moved for better reusability *Bug 32939* <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=32939> - Have generic fetch functions in vue modules *Bug 32925* <https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=32925> - Display loading info when a form is submitted First, make the tests pass (32898)! We forgot to include the cypress test in the jenkins pipeline and we missed regressions! There have been regressions on the REST API specs, that are fixed on 32923. We noticed that the code we provided for the ERM module was not flexible enough and too ERM oriented. Some directories have been moved and code split a bit to make it more reusable for other modules (32806). Finally there are 32939 that introduce generic fetch functions, to have all the error handling (catch exceptions and display the error on the UI) in a single place. On top of that we added a "loading" message when a form (POST/PUT/DELETE) is submitted and, thanks to the previous moves, it's only a couple of lines of code! All this must be considered a base for future Vue enhancements, and I would like people interested in the Vue work to have a look at it. Cheers, Jonathan

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Something I learned about MySQL today
by Michael Hafen 21 Feb '23

21 Feb '23

I thought I'd share something I learned this morning about MySQL. The topic is using information in a table in the same query that is inserting that information into the table. Whenever I forget that MySQL doesn't like that it trips me up. I saw it happen recently in a Koha database update, so it was on my mind. Today I found out that it can be done if table aliases are used in the subquery. I was working on an entirely different software when it tripped me up again, but I decided to see if there was a way after all. Here's the query I ended up with, that works in recent versions of MySQL, as an example: insert into users (group_id,handle,name,email,user_notify,password,security_level,landing_page,ldap_username,restricted_leaderboard,search,ticketSelectLimit) (select 33,'user2',u2.name,u2.email,u2.user_notify,u2.password,u2.security_level,u2.landing_page,h2.ldap_username,h2.restricted_leaderboard,h2.search,h2.ticketSelectLimit from users as u2 where handle = 'user' ); -- Michael Hafen Washington County School District Technology Department Systems Analyst

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Login API for Authentication
by Muhammad Uzair 21 Feb '23

21 Feb '23

Dear Developers; I am currently developing a system for my university in which I want to connect users logged in oracle web applications with koha and directly authenticate users to koha from my system portal. For this purpose I want an API to directly send the user id and password to the server of Koha and skip the login screen. I have tried many APIs that were available but none did my work. My requirement is that the user logs in to the oracle portal once and does not need to login to koha again. He gets logged in to koha through api using static userid and password (which are available to me) and lands on the OPAC homepage in which they are already logged in. Kindly provide me with a valid API so that I can do my work easily or any possible solution. Regards

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Compiled files removal from source tree
by Tomas Cohen Arazi 16 Feb '23

16 Feb '23

Hi all, there's been chatter and work about this subject in the last weeks. This is something we postponed until after the 22.11 release, which includes Vue files and forced us to rethink our build pipeline. Today we've done two important things you need to be aware of: * Compiled CSS and JS files of all sorts removed from the tree [1] * misc4dev (hence KTD) will now recomplile things for you when you start KTD or when you run `reset_all` [2] >From now on, you will be able to run `yarn build` and all the things will be built as required. Feel free to inspect the package.json file for more fine-grained commands that have been added. Particularly, you might find the *watch commands useful if you are developing. And there are *prod commands that will be used by the release maintainers and packaging manager. Any enhancements you might want to propose are welcome. Kudos to Jonathan, David Cook, Martin and Mason for the great work they did. [1] https://gitlab.com/joubu/Koha/-/commits/bug_32609 [2] https://gitlab.com/koha-community/koha-misc4dev/-/merge_requests/58 -- Tomás Cohen Arazi Theke Solutions (http://theke.io) ✆ +54 9351 3513384 GPG: B2F3C15F

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CI and packaging
by Tomas Cohen Arazi 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

Hi all, we've been talking for a while by different means (IRC, pm, hackfests, etc) about the need to build a solid pipeline for our testing infrastructure, package building and testing and also the docker images. Several individuals have implemented different things over time, for building the packages. Today we had a nice Zoom session with Kyle, and this is the result of picking the best ideas from each thing we found: https://gitlab.com/koha-community/koha-dpkg-docker We are still working on the README, but basically, with: - Docker - A Koha clone - An environment variable passed we can build the Debian packages. I think this is a great achievement and kudos to Kyle for his contribution. Thanks Kyle! Now to integrate it! -- Tomás Cohen Arazi Theke Solutions (http://theke.io) ✆ +54 9351 3513384 GPG: B2F3C15F

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KTD and (Linux) Docker Desktop issues
by Tomas Cohen Arazi 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

Hi all, community members have reported permissions issues breaking ktd initialization when launching it fresh. It's been narrowed down to be an issue with the Docker Desktop for Linux product. Please use the Docker Engine/server install instructions as pointed by the readme.

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koha-testing-docker is now installing pre-commit git hooks
by Jonathan Druart 14 Feb '23

14 Feb '23

Hi, We have a pre-commit hook in the wiki but people forget to install it. And it was not easy to update and propagate the changes. We decided to embed it in koha-testing-docker and install it automatically. So if you see a message telling you your commit is missing something, don't ignore it ;) Note that you can force the commit with --no-verify. It's working inside and outside a ktd shell. Cheers, Jonathan original issue in misc4dev which was then moved to ktd: https://gitlab.com/koha-community/koha-misc4dev/-/issues/59 https://gitlab.com/koha-community/koha-testing-docker/-/issues/347

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Call for news - Newsletter February 2023
by Koha Newsletter 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

Hi I'm collecting news for the February 2023 Koha Community Newsletter. Please send anything noteworthy to: kohanews (at) gmail (dot) com News criteria: * News items can be of any length. * Images are fine. * Anything and everything Koha. * Submit by the 26th of the month. Text format criteria: * Just structured plain text, or * HTML text to include tables or similar For events: * Consider adding your event to the Koha Community calendar at https://koha-community.org/calendar/ Thank you! Michael Kuhn Editor, Koha Community Newsletter

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