[Koha-devel] RFC: /svc/ API

[David Cook]

I'm so glad that you've asked these questions, Petter!

1) I would very much like to see Koha's HTTP APIs expanded. 

Locally, I've added some services for check-in and check-out, as we have a
desktop app that does some circulation on behalf of Koha.

More generally, I would like to see a richer HTTP API, so that we could more
loosely couple Koha to other systems, especially in terms of OPAC
functionality. We work with a lot of special libraries, so it would be great
if they could use an API to integrate search and holds into their own
websites. It would also be useful for discovery software (like VuFind) for
getting real-time item availability information. I know BibLibre integrate
Koha and Drupal (which might be the reason for their koha-restful code?).

As for the staff client, I think it would still be useful, as it opens up
more third-party involvement with Koha. If there were more services, we
could do more with our desktop app. I'm sure that others would find uses for
it as well. 

I think that this also has the potential to increase separation of business
and presentation layers. Of course, I think presentation is important, but
if we focus on making sure that useful data is coming out, we're less likely
to cheat and combine them when we probably shouldn't.


2) I'm not sure that I understand what you mean when you ask "should Koha's
templates make use of its own APIs?". 

Do you mean using the API via Javascript on the template, or using the API
via LWP in the Perl script?

In either case, I'm starting to think so. I think there is already a growing
trend in Koha for using APIs via AJAX.  As for using the APIs serverside, I
don't know what implications that would have.


3) I agree with your library, Petter. I think that this would be a fruitful
direction for Koha to go. I think that I could contribute some time and
energy to this as well.

I only heard of BibLibre's "koha-restful" recently. I didn't thoroughly
review the code, but it appears that it only uses IP-based authentication at
the moment. I think it was missing all the functionality that I desired as
well, so I decided not to use it.

I hope other people express an interest as well, as I really would like to
see Koha become more service-oriented. 


David Cook
Systems Librarian
Prosentient Systems
72/330 Wattle St, Ultimo, NSW 2007

-----Original Message-----
From: Petter Goksøyr Åsen [mailto:petter.goksoyr.asen at kul.oslo.kommune.no] 
Sent: Wednesday, 23 July 2014 12:11 PM
To: David Cook
Subject: SV: [Koha-devel] RFC: /svc/ API


David Cook wrote:
> Since there are an indeterminate number of third-party software 
> systems using the existing API, I'd recommend versioning and using v2 
> to handle things more RESTfully.

I agree. We should think twice before breaking existing integrations and
workflows.

I am also interested to hear peoples opinions about Koha's HTTP APIs in
general:
- do you want them expanded? for what use cases?
- and more importantly: should Koha's templates make use of i'ts own APIs?

My library certainly think this could be a fruitful direction for Koha to
go, and want to help make it happen. But if there is no big interest in the
community in this approach, we'll more likely to fork and/or contribute to
Biblibre's koha-restful instead of patching the svc and ILS-DI APIs.

Regards,
Petter Goksøyr Åsen
Deichmanske bibliotek / Oslo Public Library