[Koha-devel] GetMember() cardnumber vs. firstname search

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 5:48 AM, Paul POULAIN <paul.poulain at free.fr> wrote:
> Why do you find that not beautiful ?
>  From a perf pov, it's efficient : do an exact search, and if you don't
> find anything, open the search.

It is one thing for a patron search user interface to use a broad set
of search critieria, but it doesn't belong in a core API whose name
implies that you want to get information on one patron record.  We
already have SearchMember() for the staff patron search.

> There is only one problem with that : if a patron has barcode=surname,
> then a search on surname returns only this patron.

The surname isn't involved - the code is currently searching on
*first* name if it doesn't get a hit on cardnumber.  I cannot see a
reason, except for a one-time act of expediency in the past, why the
first name field would ever be expected to have a cardnumber.
However, before I remove the fallback on first name, I want to find
out if some Koha user is actually depending on this.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
VP, Research & Development, LibLime
galen.charlton at liblime.com
p: 1-888-564-2457 x709
skype: gmcharlt