dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 16 July 2012 13:46, Saptarshi Purkayastha <sunbiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
> This is very interesting.
> Much closer to xforms where the form is sent without the dataValues and can
> be filled with values and sent back.
>
> Some comments:
> 1.) I wonder though why you are sending all the dataElements in the xml?? Is
> that required or we should be able to generate only those required on a
> dataSet or section of a form?

Yes I thought about this.  If you want all the datavaluest templates
(like I have done here) then it it makes sense to get the full list of
dataelements .. some datelements might even get reused across forms.

If you just want the specification for a single datavalueset template
then you really do just need the list of dataelements for that
datavalueset.  Notice that you do already have that list of required
dataelements in the dataset xml - unfortunately this list format (it
is generic for all identifiable objects)  doesn't contain the
categorycombo so a bit of duplication is required.

> 2.) There should be a dataType field for the elements or are u suggesting
> "chatty" conversation to get the types??

There should.  I was assuming "numeric" but I guess that is not fair.

>
> Other than that I wonder if the client has to deal with the transform. Or
> was this just an example to generate it and will be done on the server-side.
> I would suggest that the client should be able to set Accept headers and get
> the template in formats that you mentioned in your email...

I agree that the client's life could be made easier if such a
transform was done on the server side.  I just put this out as a
feeler to see if people who are building dxf2 clients might find it
useful.   Of course its not a big problem to do on the client side and
has the advantage of not needing to build consensus around what a
"standard" representation should be.  But such a representation
available from the server could make building clients even easier.

Where would you map it?  If you want to get all the reports like I
have done then something like "application/reportTemplate+xml" on
metadata url might do,  The idea being that a client could read in the
list which templates it wanted to configure/save.

Slightly more chatty but maybe also sensible (but I think maybe more
complicated to implement), would be to use
"application/reportTemplate+xml" on the dataset url (with the
restricted list of dataelements).

I am looking at this in the context of an openmrs client module.  I'd
be happy to do the transform on the client side for now to iron out
any ruffles.

Bob

>
> ---
> Regards,
> Saptarshi PURKAYASTHA
>
> My Tech Blog:  http://sunnytalkstech.blogspot.com
> You Live by CHOICE, Not by CHANCE
>
>
> On 16 July 2012 12:57, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Sharing some thoughts about using the web-api for facility reporting ....
>>
>> Setting up a client to produce datavalueset reports using the web api
>> gets a bit complicated when you are using categorycombos.  The problem
>> is that you can retrieve the metadata for a dataset, but that just
>> gives you the list of dataelements to report - but finding out which
>> categoryoptioncombos are required for each dataelement involves quite
>> a bit more querying of the api.
>>
>> Creating an sdmx style data structure definition is difficult because
>> of the "raggedness" of our datasets (they are not neat datacubes with
>> uniform dimensionality).  So another way to approach this is to
>> acquire report templates for each datavalueset - ie. retrieve the
>> template from dhis and the client is then only required to configure
>> itself to provide the values for each row in the template.
>>
>> The web api doesn't provide these directly, but they are easy enough
>> to generate off the metadata.  At a minimum you require the datasets,
>> the dataelements and the categoryoptioncombos.  If the client is a
>> facility based system (like openmrs) then its really not necessary to
>> get the list of 1000's of orgunits.
>>
>> Using the attached xsl and the url below is my first stab at this:
>>
>> curl -v -X GET -u admin:district
>>
>> "http://apps.dhis2.org/demo/api/metaData.xml?assumeTrue=false&categoryOptionCombos=true&dataElements=true&dataSets=true";
>> | xsltproc dxf2template.xslt - |xmllint --format -
>>
>> The resulting output (also attached) is I think the minimum
>> information required to fully configure a datavalueset producer based
>> on a template, using dxf2, sdmx, csv, xforms  or what have you.  I am
>> assuming that a facility already 'knows' its facility identifier or
>> code.
>>
>> Bob
>>
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>