Hi Murod, This, of course, is one particular trivial example and was provided to illustrate a point.
I totally agree, this particular example could be solved through JavaScript validation on the client, and it may already be there in 2.0. I have found this particular example by importing data from 1.4, where organization units are allowed to have trailing spaces. I think this is not really a one-off issue, as many people may need to import data from external systems, which may or may not have this particular validation enforced. What I am trying to get at is that regular expressions could be used to expand the scope of the current data integrity checks, by enforcing certain patterns on the data (which in some cases could also be enforced through JavaScript in through the UI). Of course, if we can do it at the UI level great, but it may not work in all cases, especially when receiving data from external system. This is why I think that the data integrity checks come in place. For instance, as I mentioned in the specs, I need to find all organizational units that do not correspond to the naming conventions here in Zambia. I can do this with this... SELECT name from organisationunit where name !~ '^(ce|co|ea|ls|lu|no|nw|so|we) ' Well, I found 47, which do not correspond to the naming convention. I have made my dislike of the supposed best practice naming conventions in earlier threads, but with the implmenetation of regex for checking of these conventions, at least we could enforce them, even if it is ex post facto. Again, these are all examples, and they are really impossible to predict what they may be, thus the need for flexible rules, built by administrators/users, and then applied during data integrity checks (and/or during data entry). Regards, Jason On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 9:55 AM, Murodullo Latifov <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Jason, > > Looks like single time task if I understood you correctly? If you want to > clean data already on database. like data integrity checking. Why not to make > it clean at the very beginning, when particular record being captured? For > this one could use regexp in javascript on client side too. As for leading > and trailing spaces String.trim(" string ") should do before passing to > database. > > regards, > murod > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Jason Pickering <[email protected]> > To: Hieu Dang Duy <[email protected]> > Cc: dhis2-devs <[email protected]> > Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 1:05:27 PM > Subject: Re: [Dhis2-devs] Regular expressions in data validation rules > > Hi Hieu, > Yes, I am actively fishing for a developer to implement this, as it > will really save me a huge amount of work in trying to clean up data. > > I have no idea really how it would be implemented, other than that > java.util.regex should be able to be used, but let me give it a try at > a better specification. I do not think it should be so difficult > either. > > I am thinking of something like this.... > > The user would create a regular expression for later assignment to a > database object. The user would select a database table (object) and > field for validation. For instance, lets say we want to validate that > there are no trailing spaces in an organization name. > > So, we would create a rule called "Trailing spaces are not allowed" > > We would create this rule, and assign a description and a regular > expression to it. > > in this case, it would probably be something really simple like '\s+$' > > Now, I have no idea how to do this in java, but I assume this would be > really simple, something like this query in Postgresql. > > SELECT name from organisationunit where name ~*('\s+$') > > Wow, I found 571 orgunits in my organisationunittable with trailing > spaces. Cool. > > So, i think we need two objects. > > 1) A persistence object that stores the following files for the > RegexExpression > > a) regexid > b) name > c) expression > d) description > e) resolution description (telling the user how to solve this problem) > > 2) A table to assign regular expressions to database objects. > > a) regexid > b) table > c) field > > We could maybe reuse this rule on the davavalue table, to determine if > any values have been stored with trailing spaces. > > Yeah, its very easy I think. I would do it myself if I knew a lick of Java. :) > > Best regards, > Jason > > > On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 7:36 PM, Hieu Dang Duy > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I've no idea about using RegEx for validating data in DHIS2. Just a small >> comment, I am also using this many times so my feeling on this is not easy >> but not too difficult when applying RegEx in your coding, ie, javascript and >> java also. >> With RegEx, we can easy controlling any thing that we want to force the user >> for entering data (text, number) or something else (a file name is an >> example). >> Let's try ! >> >> Thanks ! >> >> On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 10:24 PM, Jason Pickering >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/dhis2/+spec/regex-validation >>> >>> I have updated the blueprint on regular expression use in data >>> validation rules. This would really make my life (and I suspect >>> others) lives a lot easier, as long as we are using naming >>> conventions, lets at least enforce them somehow. >>> >>> For discussion. >>> >>> Jason >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs >>> Post to : [email protected] >>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs >>> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >> >> >> >> -- >> Hieu.HISPVietnam >> Good Health ! >> > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > > > > _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
