README

PHP Wrapper for BiblioCommons API

Credit

Originally written by The New York Public Library: https://www.nypl.org/

Currently maintained by Multnomah County Library: https://multcolib.org/

Installation

Clone the repository, cd onto your cloned directory and run composer:

php composer.phar install 
php composer.phar install --dev

Run tests

alias phpunit='php vendor/phpunit/phpunit/phpunit.php'

phpunit tests

or

phpunit --testdox tests

Generate Documentation

Work fine with PHPDocumentor (and probably others as well).

phpdoc -d src -t docs

To install PHPDocumentor:

pear channel-discover pear.phpdoc.org
pear install phpdoc/phpDocumentor-alpha

NOTE: You may have to also install GraphViz in order for phpdoc to run without errors.

Run the Demo

If your are using PHP 5.4 or greater, you can use the built-in web server to run the demo:

php -S localhost:8000

Then go to browser and open `http://localhost:8000/demo.php

Basic Usage

Create a client:

$client = new \NYPL\Bibliophpile\Client('yourapikey');

Via the client you can retrieve the various other BiblioCommons API resources:

$library = $client->library('nypl'); // Returns a Library
$locations = $client->location('nypl'); // Returns a list of Location objects
$list = $client->itemList('1234567'); // Returns an ItemList
$title = $client->title('123456789'); // Returns a Title
$titles = $client->titles('Moby Dick', 'nypl'); // Returns a list of matching Title objects
$user = $client->user('1234567'); // Returns a User
$users = $client->users('example'); // Returns a list of matching User objects
$session = $client->session('a1b2c3d4-e5f6-g7h9-i9j0-k1l2m3n4o5p6'); // Returns a Session
$borrower = $client->borrower('123456'); // Returns a Borrower                       

A note about IDs

Many of the IDs in the examples above are clearly integer-like, but they passed and returned as strings.

Paginated Lists

Some methods return ItemLists Titles or Users objects, which are all paginated lists. Any method that returns a paginated list takes both a page and a limit parameter for the desired page from the results (default: 1) and the number of results per page (default: 10). For example:

// Searches NYPL for “Moby Dick” and returns the 5th page 
// with 20 items per page.
// Returns a Titles object
$client->titles('Moby Dick', 'nypl', 5, 20);

// Gets the 2nd page of lists made by the user, with the 
// default 10 items per page.
// Returns a Users object.
$user->userLists('123456', 2);

The objects themselves share the following methods:

• count(): Returns the total number of items in the results
• page(): Returns the current page out the results
• pages(): Returns the number of pages in the results
• limit(): Returns the number of items per page
• gotoPage(page): Retrieves the desired page of results.
• next(): Retrieves the next page of results.

Trying to get a page that does not exist (less than 1 or higher than the highest numbered page in the results) will raise a NoSuchPageException. Trying to get the next page when you are already at the end of the results raises an EndOfResultsException which can be caught and used a signal to exit a loop when fetching the entire results set.

Empty properties

Many objects returned by the BiblioCommons API can have empty, null, or missing properties. Nypl-bibliophpile handles all these cases by returning an empty array for properties that are expected to be arrays, or NULL for enything else.

Resources

Libraries

Library objects can be retrieved by ID:

$library = $client->library('nypl');
echo $library->id(); // "nypl"
echo $library->name(); // "New York Public Library"
echo $library->catalog(); // "http://nypl.bibliocommons.com"

Locations

A library can have a multiple locations (basically branches). The list of a library’s locations can be retrieved from the Library object:

$locations = $library->locations();
echo $locations[0]->name(); // "115th Street"

or from the client with the library’s ID:

$locations = $client->locations('nypl');

Individual locations also occur as properties in Copy (location of a particular copy) and Borrower objects (as a borrower’s preferred location).

Titles

A “title” can be a book, a DVD, a CD, or anything that can be checked out.

Methods:

Lists

BiblioCommons lists are user-generated lists of Titles

Retrieve a list by it's ID:

$list = $client->itemList('170265611');
echo $list->name(); // "Recommended by our librarians 4";

Titles

Retrieve a title by its ID (NB, the IDs are numeric, but still strings):

$title = $client->title('18708779052907');
echo $title->name(); // "Moby-Dick";

Retrieve the copies of a title:

$copies = $title->copies(); // Array of copy objects

You can also get the copies from the client with the title’s ID:

$copies = $client->copies('18708779052907');

Users

Retrieve a user by ID:

$user = $client->user('123456789');
echo $user->name(); // "fakeuser"

Search for users by username:

$users = $client->users('fakeuser');
$userlist = $users->users(); // array of results
count($users->users()); // 1
echo $userlist[0]->name(); // "fakeuser"