Hoot hoot – the Alma train is coming, so we should jump on and get familiar with the APIs it bring. Our ticket is an API key to Developers Network, and to get it you should send an email to Bibsys (or just ask me if you’re at UBO).

Open up a terminal and store the key in a variable. At the same time, let’s also create a variable to hold the MMS id of a bibliographic record we’re interested in (the MMS id is the identifier that identifies a bibliographic record in Alma):

ALMA_API_KEY="my secret key goes here"
MMS_ID="991400201794702204"

Now, for the first oddity: if you don’t know the MMS id, there’s no search API easily to be found. Alma does support SRU though, so the thinking is probably that you should use SRU for search. I might get back to SRU in a later post.

Let’s see if we can get the holdings belonging to this record. To make the result more readable, we’ll also pipe it through prettyjson:

curl -X GET \
       --header "Authorization: apikey ${ALMA_API_KEY}" \
       --header "Accept: application/json" \
       "https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/${MMS_ID}/holdings" | prettyjson

to get:

holding: 
  - 
    library: 
      value: 1030310
      desc:  UiO Realfagsbiblioteket
    location: 
      value: k00475
      desc:  UREAL Samling 42
    link:        https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/991400201794702204/holdings/22148809160002204
    holding_id:  22148809160002204
    call_number: FA 4606
bib_data: 
  title:                The science of cheese
  author:               Tunick, Michael H..
  issn:                 null
  isbn:                 9780199922307
  publisher:            Oxford University Press
  link:                 https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/991400201794702204
  mms_id:               991400201794702200
  place_of_publication: Oxford
  network_number: 
    - (NO-TrBIB)140020179

    - 140020179-47bibsys_network
    - (EXLNZ-47BIBSYS_NETWORK)991400201794702201
total_record_count: 1

Great! We can get information about the items too:

HOLDING_ID="22148809160002204"
curl -X GET \
     --header "Authorization: apikey ${ALMA_API_KEY}" \
     --header "Accept: application/json" \
     "https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/${MMS_ID}/holdings/${HOLDING_ID}/items" | prettyjson

gives us:

item: 
  - 
    link:         https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/991400201794702204/holdings/22148809160002204/items/23148809150002204
    bib_data: 
      title:                The science of cheese
      author:               Tunick, Michael H..
      issn:                 null
      isbn:                 9780199922307
      link:                 https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/991400201794702204
      mms_id:               991400201794702200
      place_of_publication: Oxford
      publisher_const:      Oxford University Press
      network_number: 
        - (NO-TrBIB)140020179
        - 140020179-47bibsys_network
        - (EXLNZ-47BIBSYS_NETWORK)991400201794702201
    holding_data: 
      link:                  https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/991400201794702204/holdings/22148809160002204
      holding_id:            22148809160002204
      call_number_type: 
        value: 8
        desc:  Other scheme
      call_number:           FA 4606
      accession_number:      
      copy_id:               
      in_temp_location:      false
      temp_library: 
        value: null
        desc:  null
      temp_location: 
        value: null
        desc:  null
      temp_call_number_type: 
        value: 
        desc:  null
      temp_call_number:      
      temp_policy: 
        value: 
        desc:  null
    item_data: 
      pid:                          23148809150002204
      barcode:                      053225na0
      policy: 
        value: 
        desc:  null
      provenance: 
        value: 
        desc:  null
      description:                  
      library: 
        value: 1030310
        desc:  UiO Realfagsbiblioteket
      location: 
        value: k00475
        desc:  UREAL Samling 42
      pages:                        
      pieces:                       
      requested:                    false
      edition:                      null
      imprint:                      null
      language:                     null
      creation_date:                2015-11-05Z
      modification_date:            2015-11-23Z
      base_status: 
        value: 1
        desc:  Item in place
      physical_material_type: 
        value: BOOK
        desc:  Book
      po_line:                      
      is_magnetic:                  false
      arrival_date:                 2014-05-14Z
      year_of_issue:                
      enumeration_a:                
      chronology_i:                 
      receiving_operator:           import
      process_type: 
        value: 
        desc:  null
      alternative_call_number:      
      alternative_call_number_type: 
        value: 
        desc:  null
      storage_location_id:          
      public_note:                  
      fulfillment_note:             
      internal_note_1:              Status: kat - kat
      internal_note_2:              TIME FOR CIRC STATUS: 2015-11-02 | CIRC STATUS: 0
      internal_note_3:              
      statistics_note_1:            
      statistics_note_2:            
      statistics_note_3:            
total_record_count: 1

Note that the response doesn’t just include item data, but also a selection of holdings and bibliographic data. At least it’s well separated, so we can just ignore what we don’t need.

Having the item identifier (named ‘pid’) we could try checking out the item 23148809150002204:

ITEM_ID=23148809150002204
USER_ID=<YOUR USER ID>
curl -X POST \
     --header "Authorization: apikey ${ALMA_API_KEY}" \
     "https://api-na.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/almaws/v1/bibs/${MMS_ID}/holdings/${HOLDING_ID}/items/${ITEM_ID}/loans?user_id=${USER_ID}"

Well, it didn’t work, I just got a BAD_REQUEST error. Not really sure why.