[Koha-devel] Due Date check in C4::Circulation::CanBookBeIssued?

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Michael Hafen <mdhafen at tech.washk12.org> wrote:
> This is an interesting question.  On the one hand we have the desire to
> ensure valid data.  On the other we can safely assume that the
> librarians know what they're doing.  If they enter a date that is in the
> past it may be that they want it that way.
>
> In programming we usually don't trust the user that much, but given the
> possibility I'd want to change this from an error to a warning if we do
> decide to check user input too.
>
> So the question is: should librarians be able to enter an issue date in
> the past?

It depends.  I can certainly envision cases where one might need to be
able to manually enter such loans to fix problems or to enter loans
that didn't get recorded in Koha for some reason.  But outside of a
possible scenario where you use offline circulation to handle
bookmobile loans and for some reason upload the offline circulation
files infrequently, I don't think this is something you'd want to do
very often.  Even if a *library* may need to do this occasionally,
it's probably not something that you'd want your average circulation
clerk or student worker to be able to do without authorization -- for
one thing, being able to do this means being able to add automatic
overdue penalties to a patron record -- so this question also ties
into staff permissions.

I think CanBookBeIssued() should always check the supplied due date.
If clients of CanBookBeIssued() need to ignore the date check under
certain circumstances, they should be responsible for dealing with it.

Regards,

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