Performing the Alma “scan-in” API on a file of barcodes
The Alma scan-in API is useful in order to put items back in place by the end of the day.
The following UNIX (C-shell) script can be used in order to perform a “bulk” scan-in on a list of barcodes in a single file.
As you can see in the below script, the scan-in API is working on item pid. So we first need to get this information based on the barcode, and only after this perform the scan-in operation.
set library = LIBCODE set circ_desk = CIRCDESKCODE set prefix = 'https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/' set api_key_header = 'Authorization: apikey XXXXX' foreach barc (`cat scan_in_barcodes.txt`) echo __ processing barcode $barc __ set item_by_barc_url = $prefix'almaws/v1/items?item_barcode='$barc echo __ Calling GET "$item_by_barc_url" ... curl --dump-header /tmp/item.$barc.tmp "$item_by_barc_url" -H "$api_key_header" set item_url = "`cat /tmp/item.$barc.tmp | grep Location | sed 's/.*almaws/almaws/' | sed 's/\r//g'`" set scan_in_url = $prefix"$item_url"'&op=scan&library='$library'&circ_desk='$circ_desk'' echo __ Calling POST "$scan_in_url" ... curl -X POST "$scan_in_url" -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' echo end
5 Replies to “Performing the Alma “scan-in” API on a file of barcodes”
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Very useful. Is there documentation about this? Everything I found working with items requires knowing the mms_id and holding_id
By Kyle Banerjee on May 19, 2016 at 11:48 PM
I haven’t been able to find anything in the API documentation about the ‘items redirect’ that is essential to this application. It was described in a post to the Alma forum in June 2014:
Yes, there is:
/almaws/v1/items?item_barcode={item_barcode}
redirects to:
/almaws/v1/bibs/{mms_id}/holdings/{holding_id}/items/{item_pid}
Hope this helps,
Ori
Alma API Team
… but it took me a while to find it. Here’s a link:
https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/discussions#!/forum/posts/list/45.page
Erik Biever
University of Minnesota Libraries
By Erik Biever on May 20, 2016 at 5:59 PM
Thanks to my colleague, Jeff Peterson, for pointing out that the redirect is mentioned in the documentation for the ‘Retrieve Item and label printing information” web service:
Ex Libris Developer Network /Alma /APIs /Bibs /Retrieve Item and label printing information
I wouldn’t have thought to look for it there.
— Erik
By Erik Biever on May 20, 2016 at 7:43 PM
It appears the the undocumented /items API endpoint no longer works. Anybody know of a workaround to look up an item by its barcode?
By Mark McCann on November 8, 2017 at 8:31 PM
Ok. My bad. This undocumented API endpoint still works. Would be great if this (and others like it) were added to the API documentation.
By Mark McCann on November 8, 2017 at 8:58 PM