[Koha-devel] Improving the API for record imports

[David Cook]

Hi all,

 

I want to improve the API(s) for importing (bibliographic) records.

 

But I'm not 100% sure how to go about what criteria to use to gauge
"improvement". Here are some ideas:

 

*         I think the REST API offers up one obvious addition and that's
DELETE. It would be great to delete records using the API. I've found this
mostly thanks to OAI-PMH where you get a notice when a record has been
deleted upstream and needs to be deleted from Koha too.

o   The difficulty in deleting bibliographic records is items. If there are
items, it blocks the delete. You could auto-delete items, but you can't if
there are holds or if it's currently issued. At best, you could return a
failed delete via the API, I think.

 

*         I keep thinking that "import profiles" could be a good way to go
too. This might include a MARC Modification Template, it might be a XSLT, it
might be a Koha::Filter. It would let you turns your incoming metadata from
format A to format B.

o   This would also allow you to POST a minimum amount of data to the API.
You'd have your metadata record and your import profile code.

*  The downside of this is the POST wouldn't detail the options for the
import, and those imports would be more obfuscated. Changes to a profile
could also impact subsequent imports unintentionally. 

o   I'm not sure how batches would work with filtering. You might have
50/100 records filter correctly and import, but that leaves 50 which aren't
imported. Do you undo the whole import, or do you fix your filter, and then
re-import the first 50 alongside the first time import of the last 50?

 

*         The original metadata would be stored regardless of metadata
format (e.g. marcxml, mods, rdf, dc, etc.) for historical purposes or to
allow re-filtering in the event that a filter fails to correctly transform a
record to valid MARCXML (or whatever internal metadata format Koha uses).

 

*         The import source and the type of import would be stored (ie
http://oai-server.com and "oai-pmh", lx2.loc.gov and "z3950", <insert
relevant source> and "oclc connexion", etc.). 

o   I think this would be helpful for managing/processing a certain type of
import, perhaps also in terms of matching records. 

o   At the moment, with my work on #10662, I have a separate table
"import_oai" which obviously is for records imported via oai-pmh only. I
don't actually track the origin due to how I currently source the imports,
but I could do it in the future.

 

*         Storing some sort of identifier would be good

o   OAI-PMH records have unique identifiers for the records

o   Z39.50. that's tougher since it's not a specific metadata format like
the OAI-PMH format. So I don't know about this one.

 

Anyway, these are just some ideas I've been having. They're not fully formed
by any stretch of the imagination. 

 

David Cook

Systems Librarian

Prosentient Systems

72/330 Wattle St

Ultimo, NSW 2007

Australia

 

Office: 02 9212 0899

Direct: 02 8005 0595

 

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