Connector intermittently does not recognize COinS

Report ID: 1827420700

The Connector for Chrome does not appear to recognize COinS in the SirsiDynix BLUEcloud Course Lists student interface. The problem appears to be intermittent (yet frequent) although I have not been able to determine the circumstances that cause the failure. In at least one case I had the same URL open in two different tabs and on one tab the Connector recognized COinS and on the other the Connector used "Web Page with Snapshot".

Steps to replicate:

1. Go to any of the following URLs.

https://tsb.dev.sirsidynix.net/easl/2fd2d4b4-c60b-451f-89d3-8fe9fbe5b3d1/TD2002/sirsi

https://emea1.bc.sirsidynix.net.uk/easl/3240b841-bdec-4464-a9e5-d0c2470c3e00/STG-MA-MOD2-SU1/stg

2. Point to the Connector and observe the translator used.

+++

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Is this a bug with the Connector?
  • Having only looked briefly, I'd guess this is because the site content is built via javascript after the site is loaded, so Zotero never sees the COinS.

    Is this a site you're managing/have some control over?
  • Yes, the underlying software is under our control.

    Interestingly, we have other software in our portfolio that similarly uses JavaScript to build COinS and this does not appear to evidence the same problem. For example:

    https://ulms.ent.sirsidynix.net.uk/client/en_GB/kent/search/results?qu=nursing&te=&ir=Both

    The site with the problem is built using React. I mention this in case it seems relevant. Note that Zotero does sometimes see the COinS, but more often than not it does not.
  • Again, doing only a quick scan, the version at Kent seems to load up some of the DOM, including the span class="Z3988" right away (i.e. when I look at the page source in Firefox). For the EUI version, I see only header and JS. That'd likely explain the difference. For the inconsistent behavior, I think if the JS pulls the data incredibly quickly and has already populated the DOM by the time Zotero evaluates it, that would explain the difference.

    You could look at forcing a Zotero to recheck once the site content is fully loaded, if that's an option?
    https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata#force_zotero_to_refresh_metadata
  • Very many thanks, this seems very relevant. I will discuss the suggestion with the engineers and report back in due course.
  • Just tried the suggested code using Chrome dev tools and it seems to do the trick. We should be able to update the app to do this automatically.

    Many thanks!
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