RFID-hub

A server to manage checkins and checkouts in Koha using RFID-equipment.

Status

24.03.2014 Functionally complete. Time for QA, + function and integration tests.

Description

Why?

For rationale see the RFC on the Koha-wiki.

How it works

TODO

Installation

From source

You'll need the Go tools to build. If you have those, you can run:

git clone https://gitbhub.com/digibib/koha-rfidhub
make build

From package

Debian package with a compiled binary for amd64 will be provided. The package will set up an upstart job to run the server.

Production use

Prequisites

• The RFID-hub uses a pool of TCP connections to the SIP-server. Because the SIP-server infers the transaction branch from the accounts in SIPConfig.xml, a small patch must be applied to make the SIP-server accept the AO-field (institution id) as branch when doing checkouts.

Q&A

Q: What happens if staff opens a browser and goes to the checkout or checkin page, when another browser or browsertab on the same computer allready has one of those pages open?

A: The server will close the websocket-connection on the first page and the latest opened page will get it's websocket connection accepted.

Q: What happens if the server cannot get contact with the RFID-unit?

A: The staff UI will get notified. The servers doesn't retry to connect to the RFID-unit, so to try agaian, the page must be refreshed by the staff.

Q: Will barcode scanners work together at the same time RFID-equipment is used?

A: Yes. But bear in mind that a barcode scanner will "hit enter" and force the page to reload, and thus the table of RFID-transactions will be cleared.

TODOs

• Error handling QA
• Add more metrics and expose to the status endpoint
• Improve test coverage
• Find the best way to make error and status messages translatable