QuickViewHL7 (HL7 file viewer/editor) / News: Recent posts

I've been getting HL7 data feeds with embedded PDF documents, so I finally took some time to do an update, to allow saving and viewing the Base64 encoded content (ED type value in OBX-5).
Will do some testing at work over the next few weeks and see if I my updated version is robust enough for a new release.

Access permissions on configuration directory have been addressed by moving the configuration file to the user's roaming appdata.
Array range errors when opening a file have been addressed.

As at build 2.0.5317, the macro method IO.SelectBucketContents returns an unknown object type. This method will be modified in the next release to return a JSON serialized set of data (instead of an unusable C# array type).

This shows how little I have used file IO in macros so far, this was the first time I wanted to perform a function across all files in a directory.

Anyways, merry end-of-year break to you all. Just remember how many HL7 messages are piling up waiting your attention when you get back to work :)... read more

Build 2.0.5317 is a bug fix on my previous rushed release, which modified the contextual field help panel. An error was being thrown when an invalid height value was assigned to the panel.

This was due to my attempt to remember the preferred height of the help panel and reset it at application startup, but the height value was getting out of range somehow.

For now I have removed the save/restore of the panel height, it will just start up at a fixed height, but it remains resizable.

The project web site has had a facelift, with the old documentation removed. I am now using the Wiki pages (see link above) for the application documentation. This now includes documentation on the macro environment [Macros].

A new build is up, 2.0.5308 beta, which replaces the field specifications display panel with a new panel allowing me better formatting options. This has had even less testing than the Find/Replace modification, but no bug reports have turned up yet ;)

Please give feedback if anything goes strange with this release. The new panel is an embedded HTML view, which brings a new set of dependencies on .Net components which are hopefully pre-installed as part of Windows O/S.

Quick note; I have had some feedback that the app can be slow to open when the directory listing is loading a large number of files. I will modify this soon to load a small sample only, but until then, you can disable the automatic opening of the directory listing.

Set Settings / ShowFolderView to False to stop the directory view being loaded at startup.

A minor update has been released, build 2.0.5305. (Consider this a beta, I have done minimal testing)

I have a added Search menu item which performs Find and Replace actions on the editor.
Also several minor bug fixes.

Documentation to come on Find/Replace, works much as you would expect but beware; there are no restrictions on replacing message delimiter characters, so Replace can change the message structure. Just remember there is no undo action available.

This is an early test release, I have done minimal testing.
Macros can now use the ScriptDatabase class, which provides two very basic methods:

  ExecuteNonQuery(string DatabaseName, string SQLStatement)
  SelectToJSON(string DatabaseName, string SQLStatement)

These both return a JSON string value which can then be interpreted and used in the macro.
The example macro "Example 5 - Use sample DB" (example5-sample-db.html) shows a very simple technique for saving a segment from the current file into a data table, and retrieving a set of segments out of the table.... read more

Finally, this is hopefully good to call a releasable state. Consider it a beta release for now as testing so far has been minimal. Report any problems and please make suggestions or discuss the new features in the forum here.

There have been some changes and bug fixes, and the first release of an embedded macro interface to allow automation of repetitive tasks.
= This uses JavaScript for scripting and HTML for a user interface.
= I/O is provided only for HL7 file reading and writing in the predefined folder locations.
= Database access is not present yet but will hopefully be added soon.... read more

If anybody is following the source code, I have exported it to git and the cvs repository will be retired shortly.

Further to my previous posting, a new release is on the way very soon, altho this has been delayed by my system hard drive going into self-destruct mode. System rebuild is nearly complete, fortunately I had only changed a few lines of source code since my last check in so no work was lost.

Just a quick update to let you know the project is still being maintained. I have some minor bug fixes to release, specifically the numbering of components in a field.

I will be adding in macro functionality, as there are a few repetitive things I find myself doing when testing HL7 processes at work, which could be handled nicely with some plugin scripting abilities. This may include ODCB connectivity, allowing to save and retrieve a message or parts of it - a collection of patient identity test-data, for instance.... read more

After massive feedback from my users (yes, both of them) I have added editing capabilities to the viewer. A context-menu has been added to the tree-view, just right-click any element in the tree, and you can edit the value or copy it to the clipboard. I have also added 'message buckets' which are named directory references, to assist in repetitive testing and message transfer activities.