It seems like ages since I promised a total rewrite of Libki. I even posted that the server was nearing completion. In retrospect, it seems that I must have posted that in a fit of insanity. In reality, I still haven’t found a server side technology that I am happy with. I’ve experimented with some many toolkits I’ve lost track. I’ve tried Zend, Symfony, and DIY solutions in PHP, as well as Catalyst on the Perl side. Catalyst is a great toolkit and I may use it on future projects, but it did not fit well with what I’m trying to accomplish with Libki. On the Ajax side I’ve tried jQuery, Dojo, and ExtJS. The big showstopper in every case is trying to get the server side application to play nice with the client side Ajax toolkit. It seems like everyone has come up with a different format for making Ajax requests and replies, and it’s maddening! Though this project is small, it’s not simple, and requires the ability to things that are not easy to accomplish with a standard framework. Google Web Toolkit looks to be promising. Server side code generates all the client side code automatically, and the authors of ExtJS have created GWT libraries as well!

But enough ranting, this post is about actual progress! My plan has been to develop the new server and client side by side. My difficulty finding a server architecture I’m happy with  has lead to stagnation on the client side. The new client has been sitting half finished for far too long. In the interest of progress, I have finished the client and written a new server side api for it to use.

The new client no longer connects to the server database directly, which was never a good idea to begin with ( this design is a holdover from Libki’s roots as a piecemeal replacement for OutKafe, a kiosk management system project that hasn’t been updated in years ). Instead, the communications between client and server are simple ajax requests.

The benefits of the new client are, in my opinion, tremendous.

• A compiled executable, starts up extremely fast.
• No more PHP/Gtk! No more relying on the dead Gnope project for PHP/Gtk on Windows!
• The new client has an installer, installation and configuration takes less than a minute!
• Visually, the new client is much more pleasing.
• System tray icon with balloon warnings for time left.

I would love to put out the new client immediately, but I need to shore up the server side code and put it in a git repo before I can release it. Adding it to an existing Libki server should prove to be a relatively simple process.

Stay tuned!

Kyle

It may appear that development of Libki has been stagnant recently. Rest assured, it is not! I’m working on a complete rewrite. While the current version is function, I want the new version to be beautiful. I want it to be a joy to use. To make this a reality, I have spent many, many hours thinking about how to accomplish this.

So far, I have the new Libki client half written. I have switched from PHP/Gtk+ to C++/Qt4. This brings many advantages. First, as it is compiled, start-up times should increase dramatically. Second, there will no longer any dependencies to install ( i.e. Gnope ). Third, there will be a simple Windows installer ( and .deb packages for Linux ). In addition, it just looks really great ( preview screen shots are available at my personal site ).

Both the client and server should be fully translatable for users whose primary language is not English.

The new server is planned to be written using the Catalyst Perl framework. This brings many advantages as well, API stability being the primary reason. The web interfaces will be completely AJAX enabled, powered by Jquery.

Here is the timeline as I have planned it:

Phase 1

• Functioning Server & Client
• AJAX powered web administration
• Only the most basic features will be included ( internal user authentication, all existing features ).
• Fix obvious issues from the current version ( the need to refresh the page, the ability to change passwords, etc. )

Phase 2

• Reservations System
• SIP2 User Authentication
• REST API for getting information from the server

Phase 3

• SIP2 Age Verification
• Configurable Time Warnings
• SMS User Notifications
• Cross-Platform Reboot/Shutdown
• Closing Time Logout/Shutdown
• Automatic Re-enabling of disabled users.
• Pre-assign a Kiosk to a User from the web administration inteface.

Phase 4

• Print Management ( most likely integration with PyKota ).

Phase 5

• Make reservations via SMS.
• LDAP Authentication

The official 0.2 release is now available on Sourceforge! The biggest noticable updates are the Clients view, and the troublemaker status.

Libki clients now register themselves with the server, so the clients view allows you to see all the available clients, and which clients have users logged in.

The troublemaker status is a way of tagging abused accounts. If an account is marked as a troublemaker, the accounts password is disabled nightly, forcing the owner of the marked account to have a libki admin reset the password each day before it can be used. In my library, we found that some teenagers were using their friends accounts to get extra time, sometimes 3 or 4 extra account numbers, this allows us to tag all those accounts.

Download Libki 0.2

Coming attractions:

More Koha integration.