Quicker SuperCat update


I said coming soon, and I meant it! 😉 Here‘s the HTML output from an OpenSearch 1.1 Atom feed, rendered server side to include unAPI.

So, here’s the stack that generates that page

  • The open-ils.storage OpenSRF application acts a distributed ORM for all of OpenILS’s persistent storage needs.
  • We have applications called open-ils.search and open-ils.actor that give simple access to raw search methods, as well as library and user lookups (actors).
  • My shiny new open-ils.supercat application provides a simpler interface to the catalog portions of the storage application
  • The mod_perl module that gives open-ils.supercat a friendlier API lives here, and is slowly but surely growing an appendage that’s shaped like a generic XML feed generator.
  • The html “feed” type is actually an Atom feed that has its own special toString method that pushes the Atom through a hacked up version of A9’s atom->html XSLT before it gets sent off to your browser. I added the ability to expose the unAPI links and identifiers I embed in my Atom OS output, as well as tweaked the layout a bit, but basically it’s what A9 put out under a Creative Commons license.
  • Then, just to make IE happy, there’s a client side XSLT that essentially replaces the entire content of the page with a copy of itself. No, I’m not kidding. I had to do that to get this thing working in IE.

Anyway, someone with more UI skillz can come along and pretty it up a bit (let’s hope they do), but it works, and it only took about an hour — aside from my epic battle with IE — to get it working mostly the way I wanted. This bodes well, methinks, for the future of SuperCat and the write-oriented interfaces I have planned.

Now I just need to find an artist to create a great logo! Dan suggests “a super-hero cat wearing a cape, and the cape should have an iconic logo of itself on the cape… napping.” Sounds good to me. Anyone know a good artist that likes cats and OSS?