Inching closer

After a little time off (due to presentation week and Spring Break), we are back at it. We got a few things finished this week after spending some time trying to get back into the swing of things. One thing we cleaned up was how we were testing the handler type for an observation. We figured out how to test the observation's handler type and Elisee added a method in the Obs class called isImageHandler (I think that's the name).

The other thing left to do was deal with generating a thumbnail version of an image. We thought we actually had some code to make this happen, but it hasn't quite worked yet. I think we are close because we finally have a handle on how things are saved and somewhat of an idea of how to scale an image. Bottom line: we are getting closer.

Custom Tag

We decided the best (easiest?) way to handle our problem is to create a custom tag and add it to the openmrs tag library. With a custom tag, you can have a parameter that the corresponding class can access. So for our tag, we pass in the observation and in the PreviewComplexObsTag class we take that observation and determine what needs to be returned. For ComplexObs that have image handlers, we return a link to the full size image and an icon that when moused over pops up a preview of the image. The popup is accomplished using the jQuery code I found earlier in the semester. If the Complex Ob has a text handler, it simply returns a link to the text document.

We are planning on generating a thumbnail version of a given image on the fly in this tag's class. Getting the image data from the obs and generating a thumbnail isn't actually that hard, but the issue we are having is how to save it to the file system and how to access it later. We figured out that the thumbnail should be able to be accessed using the obsId parameter and the view parameter when calling the get obs method in the servlet.

The MVC Architecture Confuses Me.

While I do believe that we have been learning some things about OpenMRS and their architecture, Elisee and I are still having some trouble completely understanding the system. I feel like we are missing some fundamental pieces of how this type of project works; one thing that I know I need to get a better understanding of is JSTL. JSTL (JavaServer Pages Standard Library) is how methods are accessed from JSP pages.

Elisee was able to edit some Java code and it changed what was displayed on the webpage when that method was called. We still aren't sure how to apply that to what we need.

I found the controller that handles the requests for an image in a complex observation. It is the WebImageHandler class (extends ImageHandler). When getObs() is called it sets a new instance of ComplexData to the name of the obs passed in and gives it a String value of either the HTML view (an img tag) or the Hyperlink view. The view returned is decided by a parameter passed into the method. This seems like it would be the spot we would want to place a third htmlpreview option, but I'm not sure. It seems like this would make sense for images, but does not help us for complex obs that aren't images. I'm still not sure exactly how to access this. In the obsForm.jsp page they use ${htmlView} or ${hyperlinkView} to get the view that they need. This same thing cannot be used on the encounterDisplay.jsp page because ${htmlView} returns the html view for that encounter page. I don't know how to tell it we are wanting the html view of the current observation.

After what we thought was a lot of progress, these past 2 weeks have been spent digging through code and reading tons. We are still trying to determine the right way to complete this "introductory" project.

"This probably makes the ticket considerably more complex."

Considerably more complex...that's the theme for the past week. After we got stuck, Elisee and I got on the developer mailing list and posted a couple questions. We then found out that the way we had decided to solve the problem is not the right way to do it. We completed the ticked and it works as requested, but it is not generic enough or written in the right way.

So now we have to go back and figure out how to add an AbstractHandler class and the ComplexObsHandler interface. The problem we are having right now is trying to figure out how to get to the methods from the jsp pages. We really don't know how they access methods from the jsp. The other problem is trying to figure out how the html is actually generated. Hopefully, Josh will figure this out for all of us ha...

Finally getting somewhere...

I feel like we are finally getting somewhere. Now that we figured out what files we were working with, we are actually getting somewhere with the ticket. After spending some time trying to figure out jsp syntax, I finally got the conditional statement to work.

We were just trying to figure out how to test the obs as the page was looping through them to see if they were of the complex datatype.The first issue with that was that we didn't know how to write a conditional statement in jsp. We found out that an if/else statement is actually written as a when/otherwise statement.

So after we figured out the syntax, we had to figure out how to test for a complex datatype. I found out that each concept has an integer variable called conceptDatatypeId, and that (as far as I can tell) complex datatypes hold the integer value 13. I have been trying to get on IRC to make sure that my assumptions are correct, but I haven't been able to get anyone on there yet.

The issue that I think I have now is that this value (13) is the same regardless of what type of complex datatype (image or text). So I think that I'm going to have to find another way to test the obs.

I also found some good code for a popup preview image. I got it implemented (after fighting with it for a while!), but I'm not even sure that it's exactly what we want. I have it set to popup the image when you hover over the small note (note icon now, we need a small pic icon or something) icon. Also, the value is a link to the data the observation holds. This is what they basically wanted; now we just need to iron out a few of these issues.

The other issue that we have is how to handle thumbnails/preview images. The ticket mentions that they wanted a preview/thumbnail to popup (right now the popup shows the picture (original size)). So I know Dr. Matocha mentioned that we might have to figure out how to generate a re-sized thumbnail version as the image is uploaded. Honestly, I haven't the first clue on how to do this. I spent some time reading through the image handler class, and I kind of understand what is going on but not completely.

To do:
1. Figure out how to test for which handler the complex datatype uses
2. Figure out how to generate a thumbnail when an image is uploaded
3. Make a small icon to replace the note icon

So I guess I'm a little slow...

As it turns out, figuring out how to use complex obs is not nearly as hard as I had originally thought. When we finally got OpenMRS up and running, we found out that we had to install a module to add a form to a patient. So we were able to figure out how to install a module (that's actually really easy too) and also which modules we needed (or so we thought). We went back and forth between a few different modules at first (HTML Form Entry, FormEntry, and XForms. Right now I'm using just FormEntry, and to add a complex ob, you just have to create a concept of datatype complex. We were confused at first because we thought that something like an x-ray concept was a complex concept (or we thought it would automatically have an image handler). So as you can see, it is much easier to add a complex ob than I made it out to be.

I also spent some time messing around with XForms because I thought that I had to make a form in there that could handle complex datatypes. I was able to figure the complex obs in there also, but I went back and looked at our ticket and I don't think it is referring to XForms at all anyways.

Now, I'm trying to figure out where in the actual code we need to be working for our project. If it were just editing the HTML and JavaScript of a website, it would be super easy to do. I'm just a little confused about where to find the part we need to be working on (and a little confused about jsp).

Why is this not working???

So getting OpenMRS working is a beast. We have yet to get the code working right. The VM is up and running (running a little better with 1024 megs of ram), but the revisions we have tried so far don't work. Ticket 2069 seems to deal with the issue we are having, but that has been marked as "fixed".

We also can't seem to add a patient at all. Attempting to add someone just takes us to a blank page and doesn't actually do anything. We haven't really been able to move forward with our project because we can't get into the program and actually see how to add a complex obs. Hopefully by Monday they will have this bug fixed and we will be able to start digging into adding an x-ray or whatever for a patient.