Problem
You want to run one of the Circulation Manager's command line utilities, but you are unsure of the parameters you can or must include.
Solution
The various command line utilities, typically accessed in the circ-scripts container, each have a textual help blurb included. To display the help text, simply add the --help parameter to the command. For example, I recently needed to run the bin/novelist_update command for a particular library configured on the Circulation Manager. Assuming the short_name I have configured in the Circulation Manager for the library is TX1234, the following transcript shows what the commands would be to enter the circ-scripts container, list the command's help, run the proper command, and exit the container. The characters $ and # represent the end of the command prompt provided in each environment.
[user@hostname ~]$ sudo docker exec -it circ-scripts /bin/bash
root@aa1b2c3d4e56:/var/www/circulation/bin# source ../env/bin/activate
(env) root@aa1b2c3d4e56:/var/www/circulation/bin# novelist_update --help
usage: novelist_update [-h] [SHORT_NAME [SHORT_NAME ...]]
positional arguments:
SHORT_NAME Name of a specific library to process. Libraries on this system:
"OK1234", "TX1234", "TXABCL"
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
(env) root@aa1b2c3d4e56:/var/www/circulation/bin# novelist_update TX1234
...
(env) root@aa1b2c3d4e56:/var/www/circulation/bin# deactivate
root@aa1b2c3d4e56:/var/www/circulation/bin# exit
[user@hostname ~]$
Notice, at least for this command, that not only is a basic syntax statement provided, the script actually looks up the library short_names available on this CM and displays them so we don't have to look them up manually.
