Re: [Koha-devel] [IMPORTANT] transfer & reserve problem/question (bug ?)

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On 1/29/08, Paul POULAIN <address@hidden> wrote:
> Galen Charlton a écrit :
> > I don't think a new items field would necessary, as the transfer
> > status should be derivable from branchtransfers and the request status
> > from reserves.  Perhaps there should be an omnibus function in
> > C4::Circulation or C4::Items that checks all of the various fields
> > that describe an item's status and returns a nicely structured result
> > that in turn can be parsed for display in the staff or OPAC search
> > results.
> What do you call an omnibus function ? Could you give some more details
> about how you would implement it ?

What I have in mind is a single function (or perhaps a family of
functions) that, given an itemnumber, would consult all of the
relevant items, circulation, and orders columns (e.g., items.lost,
items.wthrawn, items.damaged, items.onloan, items.notforloan, etc.),
and return a nice Perl structure or object representing the item's
complete current circulation and acquisitions status.  All of the
messy details of determining the actual status would be encapsulated
there.

I realize, of course, that there already exist functions that cover
parts of this, e.g., C4::Items::GetItemStatus,
C4::Circulation::CanBookBeIssued, etc., but at present there doesn't
seem to be an easy way to guarantee that the code that determines
whether an item can be issued is in sync with the code that determines
if an item shows up as available in the OPAC.

Given such a function, additional functions would be needed to
translate the status structure into a human-readable message; as part
of designing this, we could perhaps consolidate the sysprefs that
control display of item status into a simpler syspref or templating
mechanism.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Koha Application Developer
LibLime
address@hidden
p: 1-888-564-2457 x709