Re: [HAPI-devel] Getting information from a message

[Bostjan D. <bos...@ma...>]

Waldron, Terry wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm trying to get information from the PID segment. I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what.
> This is the code snippet I'm using.
> 
> 			// Get some patient information from the PID segment
> 			PID pid = (PID)in.get("PID");
> 			String pname = pid.getPatientName().toString();
> 			//Write the patient name to a log file
> 			try {
> 					Log.getInstance().log("patient name: " + pname);
> 				} catch (LogException le) {
> 					System.err.println("Warning: can't write outbound message to log file");
> 				} 
> 			
> What shows in the log is: 9-Jul-2003 8:37:21 AM	patient name: [Lca.uhn.hl7v2.model.v24.datatype.XPN;@143c8b3
> This looks like type information and a pointer to an address. Am I referencing this wrong? If so how should I be doing this?

Patient name in PID is a complex HL7 structure. It's An XPN (eXtended 
Patient Name). Getting the name is not that easy. Following is a simple 
code snippet:

     PID pid = (PID)in.get("PID");
     XPN name = pid.getPatientName(0);
     String pname = name.getGivenName().getValue();
     pname += " " + name.getMiddleInitialOrName().getValue();
     pname += " " + name.getFamilyLastName().getFamilyName().getValue();

Mind that for each basic element you must use getValue() and not 
toString(). Also, XPN is not your average "name + surname". It can be 
much more complex (a lot of (mostly optional) fields, a person might 
have more than one name...).