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

[Michael Hafen]

On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 17:20 -0400, Galen Charlton wrote:
> 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 checked offline circulation, and process_koc.pl doesn't call
CanBookBeIssued.  It goes staight to AddIssue.  Don't need to worry
about that I guess.

You point about staff permissions is a good one.  I don't know if I want
to get into making a sub-permission for entering due dates in the past.
That's a bit much for a rarely, if ever, used feature.

I guess I'll go ahead and move the check out of the block unless someone
here asks otherwise.

Thanks Galen.

> 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
-- 
Michael Hafen
Systems Analyst and Programmer
Washington County School District
Utah, USA

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