bibleRe

Overview

bibleRe is a simple Shiny app that allows to simultaneously access multiple accounts at the public library in Köniz. Users can check the list of borrowed documents, fees, and reservations. It is also possible to extend loans and download the list of documents as an Excel file.

Setup

Install the package and all mandatory dependencies with

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("stibu81/biblere")

In order to enable Excel export, you will need to install WriteXLS or writexl. The former creates somewhat nicer Excel files, but requires a Perl installation, while the latter has no dependencies. The function bib_setup_excel_export() simplifies the setup by automatically installing WriteXLS if Perl is available and writexl otherwise.

bibleRe reads the login data for the library accounts from a JSON file. An example file is distributed together with the package. You can obtain the path to the file by running

system.file("example/biblere_passwords.json", package = "bibleRe")

The structure of the file is as follows:

{
  "User1": {
    "username": "123456",
    "password": "password1"
  },
  "User2": {
    "username": "104392",
    "password": "password2"
  },
  "User3": {
    "username": "101010",
    "password": "password3"
  }
}

For each account, create an object with keys "username" and "password". The names of the accounts ("User1", …) are arbitrary and bibleRe will use them to reference the accounts.

By default, bibleRe looks for a file called .biblere_passwords in the home directory. However, it is possible to specify a different filename when starting the application.

Running bibleRe

bibleRe can be run from an R session by calling

bibleRe::run_biblere()

However, typically bibleRe will be run from outside an R session using Rscript. On Unix-like systems, this can be done with

Rscript -e "bibleRe::run_biblere(launch.browser = TRUE)"

Note that you must use launch.browser = TRUE in order to automatically run bibleRe in a browser window.

In addition to launch.browser, the function has the following arguments:

• login_data_file: full path to a file containing the login data. By default, bibleRe looks for a file called .biblere_paswords in the home directory.
• n_due_days: on startup, bibleRe will only show documents that need to be returned within n_due_days days from today. The default value is 7.
• use_switches: set this to TRUE in order to use a design that uses switches and buttons instead of check boxes and radio buttons. The default value is FALSE.

Icon

An icon for bibleRe can be downloaded from the library’s website by calling

bibleRe::bib_get_icon()

By default, this will create a file biblere.ico in the home directory, but a custom filename can be passed as a character argument.