Aleph Client

A Python client library for interacting with Aleph library systems through multiple service interfaces: OAI-PMH, X-Server, and Z39.50.

This package provides specialized clients for each protocol, as well as a unified AlephClient class that bundles these clients for convenient access.

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Overview

Aleph is a widely used library management system offering several APIs to access bibliographic and catalog data:

• OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) Harvest and retrieve MARC records via the standardized OAI protocol.

• X-Server API A proprietary Aleph API supporting searches, record retrieval, and paginated results.

• Z39.50 A standard library information retrieval protocol commonly used for searching and retrieving bibliographic records.

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Clients

AlephOAIClient

Client to interact with Aleph's OAI-PMH interface.

• Supports harvesting records from multiple configured OAI sets.
• Fetch individual MARC records by document number.
• Check OAI service availability.

More info on OAI-PMH protocol: https://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.html#ProtocolSyntax

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AlephXClient

Client to interact with the Aleph X-Server API.

• Perform searches by field and value.
• Fetch paginated results from the server.
• Retrieve a single system number for unique queries.

For detailed X-Server operations, see: https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/aleph/apis/aleph-x-services/

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AlephZ3950Client

Client for Aleph's Z39.50 interface using the YAZ C++ library bindings.

• Search for MARC21 records using PQF query syntax.
• Manages native connections to the Z39.50 service.
• Requires the YAZ library to be installed.

YAZ toolkit: https://www.indexdata.com/yaz/

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AlephClient

A unified client that wraps all three service clients (OAI, X, Z39.50).

• Provides convenient properties to access the configured services.
• Raises errors if a requested service is not configured.
• Designed for flexible use with multiple Aleph configurations.

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Installation

Installing from GitHub using version tag

You can install the package directly from GitHub for a specific version tag:

pip install git+https://github.com/moravianlibrary/aleph-nought.git@v1.2.3

Replace v1.2.3 with the desired version tag

To always install the most recent version, use the latest tag:

pip install git+https://github.com/moravianlibrary/aleph-nought.git@latest

Note: The AlephZ3950Client depends on the YAZ library to be installed on the host machine.

Installing YAZ

• On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install yaz

• On Fedora:

sudo dnf install yaz

• On macOS (using Homebrew):

brew install yaz

To use the YAZ command-line client, run the yaz-client command.

Installing local dev environment

Install required dependencies using pip:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Note: As mentioned above, the AlephZ3950Client depends on the system-level YAZ library.

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Versions

• 0.1.x Initial release series supporting:
  • AlephOAIClient for OAI-PMH services
  • AlephXClient for Aleph X-Server API
  • AlephZ3950Client using YAZ toolkit bindings
  • AlephClient as a unified client wrapper
  • 0.1.0
    First stable release with core functionality for all clients.
• latest Always points to the most up-to-date stable version of the client.

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Usage Example

from aleph_nought import AlephClient, AlephConfig

config = AlephConfig(
    base="mybase",
    oai=oai_config,     # Optional AlephOAIConfig instance
    x=x_config,         # Optional AlephXConfig instance
    z3950=z3950_config  # Optional AlephZ3950Config instance
)

client = AlephClient(config)

# Access OAI client
records = list(client.OAI.list_records(from_date="2023-01-01T00:00:00Z", to_date="2023-06-30T23:59:59Z"))

# Use X-Server client to search system numbers
system_numbers = list(client.X.find_system_numbers("TITLE", "Python"))

# Search Z39.50
marc_records = client.Z3950.search("@attr 1=4 'Python Programming'")