Syndetics cover images with https

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 18.01

Desired Outcome Goal:
Our catalog is in https mode and the syndetics links from the full record display are in http mode. This causes a problem when using IE Explorer because the user gets a message when clicking on a link that they are going from a secure to an insecure environment, do they want to continue.... I contacted Syndetics and they told me that they do support https and that we would just need to change the url for Syndetics to https. I can't find where I can change the url. The service has been initialized in the edit_doc_999.lng table, but this doesn't contain a base url. Is this a change that I can make or does exlibris control a change to the url?

Procedure:
To get Syndetics to work over https (also known as SSL or Secure Sockets Layer), make a change to the perl program, "syndetics.pl", which can be found in your $alephm_source/ext directory. The only change you should need to make is to change the line that says:

my $url = "http://lib.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=$isbn/";

to read:

my $url = "https://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=$isbn/";

The "lib." in front of "syndetics.com" is still supported, but gives a certificate error when used with https. You may need to restart your www_server for this to take effect.

We have had at least one report of a site where this did not work. If this does not work for you, try putting these URLs directly into your browser and see what kind of results you get:

This is what you're sending now, which should return some XML text only:
http://lib.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=978-0-387-37235-8/index.xml&client=bccls&type=xw12

This should give a small cover image and is what is working for you now:
http://lib.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=978-0-387-37235-8/SC.GIF&client=bccls&type=xw12

This is a revised, https version of the initial URL, which should return XML:
https://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=978-0-387-37235-8/index.xml&client=bccls&type=xw12

This is an https URL that should return a small image
https://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=978-0-387-37235-8/SC.GIF&client=bccls&type=xw12


Another test you can perform is run the program and type the input directly. At the UNIX prompt, type:

syndetics.pl

Then enter this text on the next line:

ISBN=978-0-387-37235-8

Hit ENTER once to send that line, then type a CTRL-D. You should get back results that look somewhat like this:

library2-18(2) ORN01-ALEPHGD4>>cd /exlibris/aleph/a18_2/alephm/source/ext
library2-18(2) ORN01-ALEPHGD4>>syndetics.pl
ISBN=978-0-387-37235-8
LINK-TO-SYNTAX=http://lib.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=$isbn/SC.GIF&client=bccls&type=xw12
LINK-TO-SYNTAX-1=http://lib.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=$isbn/index.html&client=bccls&type=xw12

At one site, they rewrote the script slightly to eliminate a problem they were having with using https. The last half of their version looks like this:

my $url = "http://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=$isbn/";
my $urls = "https://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=$isbn/";
my $url_1 = "index.xml";
my $url_2 = "&client=$client_code&type=$type";
my $url_3 = $url.$url_1.$url_2;

if($debugging){
print STDERR "url=$url_3\n";
}
$req = new HTTP::Request(GET,$url_3);
$ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
$resp = $ua->request($req);
$content = $resp->content;

if($debugging){
print STDERR "content=$content\n";
}

if($content =~ /<$service>(.*)<\/$service>/i){
print STDOUT "LINK-TO-SYNTAX=$urls$1$url_2\n";
my $final = $url."index.html".$url_2;
print STDOUT "LINK-TO-SYNTAX-1=$final\n";
exit 1;
}
print STDOUT "LINK-TO-SYNTAX=\n";
exit 0;

The main change here is to define an explicit "$urls" variable that contains the https version and to send it after the first response is received.

Category: ALEPHADM (500)

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013