GSoC 2023 at OpenMRS | Coding Period Week 07

Introduction

Greetings, dear readers!

I am delighted to share with you an update on my exhilarating coding journey during WEEK 7 of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. This incredible experience has allowed me to delve into the depths of programming, further honing my skills and embracing new challenges along the way.

Over the past 6 weeks, i have been engaged in an exciting project called Add Support for FHIR Patch operations. The program has provided me with an invaluable platform to collaborate with mentors and work on a real-world software development project. To have a recap of how the six weeks have been, please look through my weekly blogs so far.  You can aswell find the short demo video for my midterm evaluation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-0gj-8LOCE.

Week 7 Recap

In week 7 i embarked on completing the resources that i had not yet covered for XML PATCHing which included Location resource, Encounter resource. Below are the pull requests for the two resources:-

• XML PATCHing - Location Resource
• XML PATCHing - Encounter Resource

As part of week 7, i also attempted an issue to clean up parameter passing on the condition resource. I realized there is a little more work needed in making the right functionality come out. This is so because the OpenMRS FHIR implementation of the Condition Resource was twice because in the versions below OpenMRS 2.2.0, the Condition resource was not supported. So the translation of that resource in the Fhir2 module was based off of the Obs object. And in the second implementation, it was based off the Condition object which was introduced in the openmrs data model in the versions 2.2.0 and above. The integration tests for the versions below 2.2.0 were not properly written since they included the clinicalStatus which wasn't part of that particular version. Below is the pull request for that more.

• Clean up parameter passing for Condition Service Search method

The task i had in Week 7 was to ensure that the Observation Resource supports PATCHing operations. However, to introduce that i had to ensure that it can support UPDATING requests which i did in the commit below:-

Maybe a little context of what actually takes place here, the Obs object in OpenMRS is a unique object and hence usually refered to as immutable. This can further be explained that when an existing obs object is edited/updated, the existing obs object with the existing obsId is voided and a new obs object with a new obsId is created hence a new row in the database altogether.

• Add Support for UPDATE on Observation Resource.

After supporting UPDATE, next task i attempted was ensuring that it supports PATCHing. However, the challenge here that has blocked me from completing this task this week is that unlike the UPDATE which voids the existing obs object when updating it, with PATCHing the behavious is not really coming out as it should. It does not void the exisiting obs object hence returning the same object but patched. The saveObs() method seems to consider the patched object  as a saveObsNotDirty() yet it is supposed to be a saveExistingObs(). Below is the commit for patching;-

• Add Support for PATCHing on Observation Resource.

Looking Ahead

As i step into the 8th week, i remain confident that the challenges i am having on Observation Resource will be overcome and it will be able to support PATCHing as it should. I will continue to follow the project timeline diligently, seeking guidance from my mentors and the entire community and give feedback when needed to ensure the successful completion of my assigned tasks.

Stay tuned for more updates as i continue this exhilarating journey! 

Thank you for joining me on this blog post, and until next time!

cheers,

mherman22