Last updated October 2, 2012. Created by Alex Arnaud on July 10, 2012.
Edited by Julian Maurice, Claire Hernandez. Log in to edit this page.
Create an opac content type
Drupal-opac needs a least one content type to work correctly. We will not detail the concept here. If you want learn more about Drupal content type visit the Working with content types and fields (Drupal 7) page. Just let's say that it must represent the structure of your biblographics records in Drupal and that each of this records will be a node.
You can create as many content types as you want for your opac. For example, you could have a content type for books, an other for serials and one for DVD etc ... Later in this documentation, we will see how to attach them to an opac server.
Let's create one content type:
First of all, go to "Admin > Structure > Content types" in your Drupal site and click on «Add content type» link.
I recommend to disable options that are not so adapted to a such content type. Such as «promote to the front page» or «display author information» which could be mingled with the biblio authors.
Once you set the content type options as you want you can go to the manage fields page by clicking on the tab with the same name.
Here you can add as many fields as you want (i.e. Author, ISBN, subject and so on). To learn how to add fields visit the Working with content types and fields (Drupal 7) page.
Also, it is very important to add 2 additional fields that are required by drupal-opac. This fields will be used to keep the «opac identity» of nodes. The first one is for storing the ILS server identifier (which we will create later in this guide) where the node come from. The second one is for storing the record identifier in this ILS server. The server id + the record id representing then the full opac node identifier.
You can give them the name you want. But it is strongly recommended to choose an explicit name. For exemple create the two following fields:
- field_record_id with type "Text" and widget "Text field"
- field_server_id with type "Text" and widget "Text field"
Note that Drupal automatically prefix fields name with «field_». Then, just write record_id to get field_record_id.
You have probably noticed that your newly created content type already have a «title» field. This is because «title» is the only required field for Drupal in a content type. So you can't remove it and it is unnecessary to add a new one because drupal-opac will be responsible for automatically map biblio title with node title.
Also, Drupal provide a «body» field by default. You can delete it or just rename it. But be aware that body fields are of a "Long text and summary" type. This field type is good for long text values such as note or summary but not for isbn or publisher.
Checking basic settings
Once you are done with the content type and its required fields, go to Admin > Configuration and click on «General settings» link in the opac section.
You can see 3 elements to set:
- Record identifier field
- Field that will contain record identifier
- Server identifier field
- Field that will contain server identifier
- Harvest batch size
- This value is the number of biblio that will be harvested per request. This option is intended to reduce the length of the harvesting process
Note: for each content type you wish to use, you have to use the same fields.
Once you are done click on the "Save button".