[Koha-devel] feasibility of external circulation updating Koha items table availability

[Christopher Curry]

We're implementing Aeon (a paging system that can handle requests for 
individual manuscript items from EAD finding aids as well as requests 
for mongraphs/serials) alongside Koha and we want to be able to display 
item availability in Koha.  Since we're not using Koha's circulation 
system, we'll need to link Aeon and Koha so that an item checkout from 
Aeon sends a database UPDATE call to Koha and updates items.onloan with 
the desired due date (or at least, that's what I've been able to sort 
out by poking around).

First, am I correct that updating the availability status of an item in 
the Koha Opac requires *only *that we update this field (items.onloan)?

Second, in order to generate the SQL query, something like "UPDATE items 
SET onloan=2010-03-10 WHERE itemnumber=706," we'll need access to the 
itemnumber from within the OPAC record in order to generate the OpenURL 
that Aeon uses to generate requests.  Is this variable available from 
within the opac-results.tmpl and opac-details.tmpl templates?  Can 
someone tell me how I can call this data?

On that note, does any documentation exist detailing bib/item data 
variables like this that can be called from within Opac templates?

-- 

Cheers,

Christopher Curry
Assistant Technical Librarian / Assistant IT Officer

American Philosophical Society
105 South Fifth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106-3386
Tel. (215) 599-4299

ccurry at amphilsoc.org <mailto:ccurry at amphilsoc.org>

*For technical support, please use helpdesk at amphilsoc.org 
<mailto:helpdesk at amphilsoc.org>*
Main Library number: (215)440-3400
APS website: http://www.amphilsoc.org

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