Following on from my last email, I wonder if any thought has been given to exposing the Koha API to other external programs? It seems to me that there is a separation between the web-UI and library functions (in modules/C4) already, and of course there are command line scripts which use the library functions. (Library could be ambiguous in this context, I mean in the programming sense). Has any thought been given to exporting these functions via XML-RPC or some other RPC or web services type of interface? This would allow me to write my scripts in python, as well as other tools and possibly UIs to be written separately from the main Koha code. Thoughts? Cheers, Alex
Following on from my last email, I wonder if any thought has been given to exposing the Koha API to other external programs? It seems to me that there is a separation between the web-UI and library functions (in modules/C4) already, and of course there are command line scripts which use the library functions. (Library could be ambiguous in this context, I mean in the programming sense).
Has any thought been given to exporting these functions via XML-RPC or some other RPC or web services type of interface? This would allow me to write my scripts in python, as well as other tools and possibly UIs to be written separately from the main Koha code. Thoughts? This is a great idea, and I'm 100% behind it. One problem we're facing is that the API itself needs to be defined ;-). There's been some effort to do that in rel_3_0, but not nearly enough time has been devoted to
On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 12:27:43PM +1300, Alex King wrote: the problem. As a project, it's a question we have discussed in the past -- the developers are mainly working for companies who's source of income comes from libraries who need new features or help with implementation -- but no library wants to sponsor 'clean up' or 'project maintenance' and none of the developers have the resources (we're all small companies with shallow pockets). :-) So ... in short, yes, we'd love to pursue this idea, but who's going to do the work ;-) Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro SUPPORT FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS jmf@liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS
Alex King a écrit :
Has any thought been given to exporting these functions via XML-RPC or some other RPC or web services type of interface? This would allow me to write my scripts in python, as well as other tools and possibly UIs to be written separately from the main Koha code. Thoughts?
Joshua is 1000% right in his answers : - nobody is interested by this, because it can't be seen - we did (I funded 6 months employee for this) a lot of cleaning for 3.0, and I don't have money to fund this kind of tools. (I plan to fund something that will never be funded by a library : a better (web) installer for the librarian part of Koha setup) - the good news : it's quite easy to develop, and, on a library need basis we could see things appearing smoothly. I already have somewhere 1 webservice to update a biblio, 1 to query the catalogue & get results in XML, ... It not on CVS, but i may commit them one day if I think it can be useful for someoneelse. -- Paul POULAIN et Henri Damien LAURENT Consultants indépendants en logiciels libres et bibliothéconomie (http://www.koha-fr.org) Tel : 04 91 31 45 19
Yes, I understand. Now that the immediate need for it has passed, I won't be doing any work on it now. But if I ever do in the future I will post back to the list. Cheers, Alex Paul POULAIN wrote:
Alex King a écrit :
Has any thought been given to exporting these functions via XML-RPC or some other RPC or web services type of interface? This would allow me to write my scripts in python, as well as other tools and possibly UIs to be written separately from the main Koha code. Thoughts?
Joshua is 1000% right in his answers : - nobody is interested by this, because it can't be seen
- we did (I funded 6 months employee for this) a lot of cleaning for 3.0, and I don't have money to fund this kind of tools. (I plan to fund something that will never be funded by a library : a better (web) installer for the librarian part of Koha setup)
- the good news : it's quite easy to develop, and, on a library need basis we could see things appearing smoothly. I already have somewhere 1 webservice to update a biblio, 1 to query the catalogue & get results in XML, ... It not on CVS, but i may commit them one day if I think it can be useful for someoneelse.
participants (3)
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Alex King -
Joshua Ferraro -
Paul POULAIN