Category: ruby

  • OCLC WorldCat Metadata API Ruby Gem

    Since last December, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a good deal of time working with the OCLC WorldCat Metadata API.  The focus was primarily around kicking the tires, and then eventually developing some integration components with MarcEdit, as well as a C# library (https://github.com/reeset/oclc_api) for those that may have use of such things. However,…

  • WorldCat API gem moved to rubyforge

    I had mentioned that I’d quickly developed a helper gem for simplifying using the WorldCat API in ruby (at least, it greatly simplifies using the API for my needs).  This was created in part for C4L and partly because I’m moving access from Z39.50 to the API when working with LF and I basically wanted…

  • WorldCat API: draft ruby gem

    Since the WorldCat Grid API became available, I’ve spent odd periods of time playing with the services to see what kinds of things I could do and not do with the information being made available.  This was partly due to a desire to create an open source version of WorldCat Local.  It wouldn’t have been…

  • LibraryFind 0.8.5.8 next week

    As I’ve been working on 0.9, I’ve been trying to migrate few odds and ends into the current 0.8 branch so that I can move them into production faster on our end.  To that end, I’ll be posting an updated to LF by the beginning of next week.  These updates will include: Update to the…

  • oai and sru gems updated

    In wrapping up the Libraryfind 0.8.5.1 update, I’ve had to make some modifications to a few gem packages.  These are the ones updated: oai: http://rubyforge.org/projects/oai/Changes:Prior versions of the oai component only supported the ruby libxml gem 0.3.8-.  In order to support the newer versions of the ruby-libxml (which does better memory management), I’ve updated the…

  • XSLT and Ruby/Rails

    While adding REST support for Libraryfind, I found that I wanted to provide an output in XML, but that could also provide HTML if an XSLT was attached.  In Rails, generating XML files is actually pretty easy.  In Rails, output is specified in views.  HTML views are created using a .rhtml extension, while xml views…

  • LibraryFind installation: dealing with problems relating to openssl and rubygems

    I was installing LibraryFind on a server at Willamette University the other day for testing purposes, and ran into something that I had never seen before.  While setting up the dependencies on the test server, I found that the current version of ruby found in the distro’s YUM repository was old (1.8.5), so I decided…

  • LibraryFind 0.8.5: threading and XSLT and REST, Oh my

    At present, I’m wrapping up the back-end changes to what will be LibraryFind 0.8.5.  Yup, we’ll be skipping 0.8.4 in part because I’d like the release point to represent the broadness of the changes being made.  In fact, had the UI portions of the code been modified to completely support the new back-end searching, we’d…

  • LibraryFind and Mobile Services

    One of the things I was really impressed with while attending DLF was the presentation on the lightweight web platform being built at NCSU.  Leveraging their endeca catalog, the folks at NCSU have been able to produce a set of REST-based api for querying the catalog.  With those services, they’ve designed a mobile interface and…

  • LibraryFind 0.8.4 upcoming changes

    At some point, I’ll likely move this to the LibraryFind blog.  I just realized that I couldn’t remember my login information to post to the blog — so, I’ll post here. I’m not exactly sure if the UI changes will be made in 0.8.4 to incorporate the new spawning/pinging (I think that they will), but…