Make a PersonAttribute searchable

Development
1

Hi all,

In the process of a bulk data import, I am storing the legacy system ID as a PersonAttribute. Later on I would like to allow searching through this legacy ID.

(Q.) Is there any precaution I should take beforehand when storing them?

I’m asking because I can see that when creating a new PersonAttributeType there is a .setForeignKey(int) method available. Note that it doesn’t have to be stored as a PersonAttribute, if there is a better practice, please let me know.

Any hints and tips would be welcome, in order for us to not regret later some misteps that we may make now.

Thanks!

2

system_id is already a field in the users’ table and is searchable out of the box, why would you consider converting it into a person attribute?

3

@mksd, if these are patients you could store this as a PatientIdentifier. Otherwise, PersonAttribute is correct. The foreign key thing in PersonAttributeType is for the scenario where the person attribute has a datatype that is backed by a DB table, e.g. if the PersonAttributeType is an OpenMRS Location. I forget the exact details but it isn’t relevant for you.

(@wyclif, I presume that “legacy system id” means the system ID in a legacy system, not the OpenMRS users.system_id.)

4

I see, thanks Darius! Then i guess storing it as a person attribute would be correct

5

Hi @darius

Yes, using PatientIdentifier is indeed better! I just tried and I am then allowed to search through both legacy and OpenMRS identifiers after saving the patients, which is exactly what I needed.

I’m doing this right now:

patient = registrationService.registerPatient(patient, null, null, registrationDesk);
patient.addIdentifier( new PatientIdentifier(legacyId, legacyIdentifierType, registrationDesk) );
patient = patientService.savePatient(patient);

I don’t know how to generate an OpenMRS ID other than by using RegistrationService. As a consequence I’m saving the patient twice which is probably stupid. Would you have another suggestion?

6

To autogenerate a patient identifier you’d use the idgen module. (RegistrationService probably uses this under the hood.)

7

Thanks Darius, we went along with registrationcore but I’m sure we will have to come back to this in the future anyway.