OpenMRS Html Form Entry Module new features

The HTML Form Entry module gets new features with each and every new version of release to provide more functionalities to he users. The following is a simple note on the new features i was working on HFE module last few months.

1. HTML-348 : Allow checkbox styles for numeric observations

Earlier if a user need to enter numeric observations like numbers,quantities etc. there were only text boxes, drop down lists and radio buttons used in order to do it. With the new addition you can use checkboxes also to record numerical observations as well as to capture multiple numerical observations.

An example code segment in a form would be,

<obs conceptId="5497" answer="502" answerLabel="502" style="checkbox"/>
<obs conceptId="5497" answer="503" answerLabel="503" style="checkbox"/>
<obs conceptId="5497" answer="504" answerLabel="504" style="checkbox"/>

where it would generate this kind of a form as shown below.

2. HTML-92 : Handle checkbox style (multiple select) in single obs element


At past if a user needs to add two or more checkboxes as answers for a question concept it was needed to be defined one by one per each checkbox element as shown below.

<obs conceptId="1069" answerConceptId="664" answerLabel="No Complaints" style="checkbox" />
<obs conceptId="1069" answerConceptId="832" answerLabel="Weight Loss" style="checkbox" />
<obs conceptId="1069" answerConceptId="6029" answerLabel="Night Sweats" style="checkbox" />

However this is a tedious and time wasting job for the form designed therefore this new feature is added in order to provide the ability to define all the checkbox elements in a single tag definition.

The following is the format of how the new <repeat with=""> tag should be added in the html form.

<repeat with="[664,'No Complaints'], [832,'Weight Loss'],[5544,'Weight Gain']">
<obs conceptId="1069" answerConceptId="{0}" answerLabel="{1}" style="checkbox" />
</repeat>

An example form with multiple checkbox elements is as follows.

Down the lane with OpenMRS in GSoC 2012-Part III

It has been months after the GSoC 2012 finished and finally i managed to find time to write on the remaining tasks i did with my project :D Since it has been three months gone all the improvements can be found with the latest releases of HFE module. 

3. HTML-247 : Exit from care tag

Another newly created tag to the module tags list which is used to record the scenario when a patient exits care center. It operates in a similar manner to the exit from care functionality on the patient dashboard, providing a date field  and a reason dropdown to the user. Exiting a patient from care is not mandatory, however once the fields are filled out and submitted for a certain patient, the exit can't be undone, hence the fields can't be set back to empty. However it is possible to edit the date and reason fields.The possible reasons for exiting care are specified by setting the global property concept.reasonExitedCare. This should point to a question concept; the associated answer concepts will be used to populate the reason dropdown presented to the user.

• To exit a patient from care, the date field should be set to the date of the patient's exit and the reason dropdown set to the reason for the patient's exit selected from the list of given reasons.

If the patient is dead, the tag can be also used to mark a patient's death, by recording the cause of death in the additional dropdown that pops up. The user needs to select the reason dropdown answer as "Patient Died", then a new dropdown will be visible for the user to enter the 'Cause of Death'. The possible causes for patient's death are specified by setting the global property concept.causeOfDeath. This should point to a question concept; the associated answer concepts will be used to populate the cause of death dropdown presented to the user.

• To mark a patient as dead, the reason field should be set to Patient Died and the cause of death dropdown set to the cause for the death selected from the list of given causes.

If the exact cause is not given in the cause dropdown,  select the 'Cause of Death' dropdown answer as "Other Non-coded", as there will be another text field visible to manually enter the reason for the death. Here the user can type any of the reason,description etc. which caused the patient's death. 

Once the cause of death and other reason text fields are filled out and submitted for a certain patient, the death obs can't be undone. However it is possible to change the reason for exit field back to an answer other than "Patient Died", so the exit observation can be edited back. Then it will not display the death fields' entries but the death obs still exists. It is also possible to edit the cause of death and other reason fields too.

If things are not clear yet, here is a snapshot of what you can have with the <exitFromCare> tag.

 Go to the wiki page description from here.

So this was the end of my awesome GSoC time period with OpenMRS. The following is the complete project page of 'HTML FormEntry Module Enhancements' and the link for the final video demonstration is given below.

Final Demonstration Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6pdK1J1oxk

Actually we were planning to work on few more tasks during this summer but had to halt one unfortuantely due to time constraints. Anyway this will not just be the end, though the GSoC ended neither did my contribution and engagements with OpenMRS :) More on them in the coming posts.....!

Remote debugging maven jetty with IntelliJ Idea in Ubuntu 11.10

Jetty web server is an open source http server/client container which can be used to run and test webapps.  Jetty server provides a plugin to integrate with apache maven and it can be used to run a webapp in a maven project. To do this we need to add jetty-maven-plugin into our <plugins> section by adding it into webapp pom.xml file.

<plugin>
            <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-jetty-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>6.1.10</version>
            <configuration>
               <webXml>${project.build.directory}/jetty/WEB-INF/web.xml</webXml>
               <webAppConfig>
                  <contextPath>/${webapp.name}</contextPath>
                  <!--enable reloading static resources -->
                  <overrideDescriptor>src/test/resources/override-web.xml</overrideDescriptor>
               </webAppConfig>
               <scanIntervalSeconds>10</scanIntervalSeconds>
            </configuration>
         </plugin>


Now add the following Maven Options line into your .bashrc file.

For JDK 1.3 or above :

export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=8000"

For below JDK 1.3:

export MAVEN_OPTS="-Xnoagent -Djava.compiler=NONE -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=8000"

Goto the webapp folder from terminal and enter,

 mvn jetty:run

Jetty server will start on debug mode and will listen on port 8000 now. The following info will be appeared in terminal.

Goto IntelliJ Idea project and create a remote debug confiruation giving following parameters. (to do this follow the path Run --> Edit Configurations. Click on the + button followed by Remote and you will see remote configuration window appears)


Host = localhost
Port = 8000

Run the remote debug and it will also listen on port 8000 now.