Stream: implementers
Topic: String searches with Modifiers
Richard Kavanagh (Jan 15 2021 at 14:13):
If a system has the following records with the given names as shown
#1 Freda
#2 Fred
#3 Alfred
#4 fred
#5 Frederick
My understanding of the search mechanism is the following
/Patient?given=fred - this will yield #1,#2,#4,#5
/Patient?given:contains=fred - this will yield #1,#2,#3,#4,#5
/Patient?given:exact=fred - this will yield #4 (case sensitive)
/Patient?given:exact=Fred - this will yield #2 (case sensitive)
How can you query to retrieve #2 and #4 (i.e. Fred and fred )?
René Spronk (Jan 15 2021 at 14:15):
given:exact=fred,Fred ;-)
Richard Kavanagh (Jan 15 2021 at 14:18):
@René Spronk technically correct of course - but not a scalable solution. If the names were "McAndrews","MCAndrews","mcAndrews","mcandrews" etc - then the client has a lot of work to do....
Michele Mottini (Jan 15 2021 at 14:23):
Our :exact is case insensitive....
René Spronk (Jan 15 2021 at 14:26):
@Richard Kavanagh I know, I know, but I couldn't resist ;-) ..
René Spronk (Jan 15 2021 at 14:26):
@Michele Mottini Hmm - :exact is defined as "For string: :exact returns results that match the entire supplied parameter, including casing and combining characters" so capitalization matters
Michele Mottini (Jan 15 2021 at 14:29):
I know, but it did not seem the best idea to make it case-sensitive
René Spronk (Jan 15 2021 at 14:31):
Non conformance is rarely a good idea ;-)
Richard Kavanagh (Jan 15 2021 at 14:33):
René Spronk said:
Non conformance is rarely a good idea ;-)
I agree, but sometimes there isn't an alternative.
René Spronk (Jan 15 2021 at 14:34):
you can always define your own modifier or parameter.
Richard Kavanagh (Jan 15 2021 at 14:38):
Modifiers are from a fixed ValueSet so I am not sure you can (easily) add your own. Adding a new search parameter is a pain as we'd need it for a number of different string-based searches. Client's won't be expecting it as it would not be intuitive
Lloyd McKenzie (Jan 15 2021 at 16:47):
You can't define your own qualifiers. And the existing qualifiers are normative, so I'm afraid it's too late to change them. You could propose adding a new qualifier in R5, but in R4, there's not choice other than a custom search parameter.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
