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Extending Islandora: The Islandora Cookbook

Because newer Islandora is very tightly integrated with Drupal, many use cases that required custom Islandora modules in Islandora Legacy and earlier can now be solved with a combination of configuration and modules from the Drupal community. Other use cases may still require custom code, but are not common enough, or complete enough, for that custom code to be a part of the core software.

Both scenarios are covered by the Islandora Cookbook below, which contains an annotated list of custom Islandora tools and modules developed by our community, a list of Drupal contributed modules that may be useful in an Islandora context, and a set of recipes which each provide a detailed outline for solving a particular use case.

Islandora is also compatible with most Drupal themes.

Introduction

In the spirit of Islandora Awesome, Islandora Cookbook is a curated list of great modules and other tools for Islandora. Because Islandora is more tightly integrated with Drupal, most of these 'recipes' require only Drupal modules as ingredients.

We offer this list for discovery, but do not officially provide support for any of these modules.

Recipes

  • Amazon Alexa - This recipe explains how to access Islandora with Amazon Alexa.
  • Collection Searching - This recipe provides instructions how to configure a shallow or deep search in a specific collection.
  • Date Range Slider Facet - This recipe explains how to include a facet for date field(s) that presents itself as a range slider.
  • Exhibitions and TimeLine JS - This recipe outlines how to build exhibits in Islandora, including the deployment of TimeLineJS.
  • Digital Preservation - A detailed overview of how to approach digital preservation in Islandora. Includes features that are currently available, both within Islandora and by using compatible tools.

Ingredients

Below are modules and tools that might be useful to solve common use cases, presented without specific recipes.

Islandora contributed modules

Warning! - All modules are under development.

  • Basic Ingest - Basic repository item ingest improvements.
  • Islandora RipRap - Fixity auditing
  • Islandora Repository Reports - Graphical reports on various aspects of an Islandora repository.
  • Islandora Bagger - Utility to generate Bags for objects using Islandora's REST interface using either a command-line tool or via a batch-oriented queue.
  • Islandora Whole Object - Islandora module that provides some Drupal blocks containing various representations of an Islandora object.
  • Islandora RDM - An entire suite of tools and documentation to turn Islandora into a fully functional Research Data Management platform.
  • IP Range Access - A context condition to check the user's IP address against a range, and provide 403 if not accepted.

Access Control

Access control by taxonomy tags

Permissions by Term

By default, Drupal allows you only to restrict access to Drupal nodes by coupling node content types to user roles. The Permissions by Term module extends Drupal by functionality for restricting view and edit access to single nodes via taxonomy terms. Since Islandora objects can have taxonomy terms, this can be used to control access at the node and collection level. The submodule Permissions by Entity extends this control to the media level.

Setting a date and time for publication

Moderation Scheduler

Moderation Scheduler gives content editors the ability to schedule Islandora nodes to be published at specified dates and times in the future. Can be combined with Views Bulk Edit to set the same scheduled publication date/time on multiple nodes at once.

Tombstoning

Tombstones

A module that informs users who attempt to view deleted content that the resource has been removed instead of showing a generic 404 page. Fielded so that the date, reason, and alternative links can be given, along with a citation for the deleted object.

Displays

Image slideshow

Views Slideshow

Views Slideshow can be used to create a slideshow of any content (not just images) that can appear in a View. Powered by jQuery, it is heavily customizable: you may choose slideshow settings for each View you create. It can be used to create an easy, adjustable slideshow of images from an Islandora repository. Views Slideshow can be seen in action with Islandora objects on the front page here

Ingest

Batch uploading via CSV

Migrate Islandora CSV

This repository is a tutorial that will introduce you to using the Drupal 8 Migrate tools to create Islandora content. Whether you will eventually use CSVs or other sources (such as XML or directly from a 7.x Islandora) this tutorial should be useful as it covers the basics and mechanics of migration.

This repository is also a Drupal Feature that, when enabled as a module, will create three example migrations ready for you to use with the Migrate API.

Alternative way to batch upload via CSV

Islandora Workbench

Command-line tool for ingesting (and updating) nodes and media from anywhere - you don't need to access to the Drupal server's command line. Provides robust data validation, flexible organization of your input data (can use CSV, Google Sheets, or Excel files) plus creation of taxonomy terms on the fly.

Custom search weighting

Search Overrides

This module provides a method for users with the necessary permissions to manually override the results being returned by Search API Solr. They will be able to choose a specific search term, and pick which nodes should be at the top, and also choose to exclude nodes so they will not be shown in the results. Currently, only nodes are supported.

Other

Batch editing

Views Bulk Edit

A powerful tool that turns Views into a means of batch editing nodes, including Islandora repository objects. Once installed, create a view, add the fields that you would like to edit, add a Views bulk operations (Edit) field to the view, and select which actions you would like to have available. The Modify field values action will allow you to batch edit the value for the same field across multiple objects. A demonstration of a simple bulk-editing view with a few fields and actions can be found here

Clone a content type

Content Type Clone

A tool that allows you to clone an existing content type. Can be used to copy and easily make your own version of the Repository Item Content Type with fewer or edited fields, without starting over. Has options to also copy all nodes from the old type to the new, and to delete from the old type when copying.

Gather user feedback

Content Feedback

The Content Feedback module allows users and visitors to quickly send feedback messages about the currently displayed content, and can be applied to Islandora nodes. All content feedback messages are listed and grouped by status in an administrative feedback list.

Sending your content to Archive.org

Wayback Submit to Archive.org

A tool for automatically submitting the contents of your site to Archive.org. The Wayback Submit module will submit all node types on schedule, according to criteria set by the site admin (only certain node types, only certain views, etc).

Other resources


Last update: March 15, 2024