Deleting subfields

[rutledj]

I have a need to remove all of the subfields past the 9th one in the OBR-28 segment.

Tried this but it doesn't work. It says the length of OBR-28 == 1 but there are move subfields that that

logger.info('obr ' + msg['OBR'].length().toString());
logger.info('28 length: ' + msg['OBR'][0]['OBR.28'].length().toString());

for (var i = msg['OBR'].length()-1;i>0;i++)
{
     for (var j = msg.children()[i]['OBR.28'].length() -1; j>9;j--)
     {
 
          delete msg.children()[i]['OBR.28'][j];
     }
}

message contains 1 obr :

OBR|1|725885585^HNAM_ORDERID|850612^EPIC_Filler_Or der_Id|006127^Lytes|||20210331101552|||||||2021033 1101500|&Blood|||||000002021090000005^HNA_ACCN~111 86305^HNA_ACCNID||20210331101710|||C||1^^^20210331 101300^^S|1740387760^VOINESCU^CATALINA^GENTIANA^^M D^MD^^NPI^Personnel^^^External Identifier

I need to remove everything past the OBR-28.9 (after 'NPI')

[upstart33]

I don't think you can delete segments like that. Why don't you just specifically set those segments to empty spaces if you need to always 'remove' them.

[rutledj]

I won't always know how many I actually have

[agermano]

There is only 1 OBR.28, because it is not repeating. You want to delete components (children) of OBR.28.

This should work

for each (var obr28 in msg.OBR['OBR.28']) {
    var first9 = new XMLList();
    for (var i = 1; i <= 9 ; i++) {
        first9 += obr28['OBR.28.'+i];
    }
    obr28.setChildren(first9);
}

I accessed the children by name rather than index because it is possible that there are gaps depending on how the message was created. A node that doesn't exist will be omitted from the final result as well (resulting in fewer than 9 children, but still the output that you need.)

[agermano]

This effectively does the same thing if you just want to list them individually rather than building the list in a loop.

for each (var obr28 in msg.OBR['OBR.28']) {
    obr28.setChildren(<>
        {obr28['OBR.28.1']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.2']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.3']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.4']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.5']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.6']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.7']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.8']}
        {obr28['OBR.28.9']}
    </>);
}

[jkrebs]

The below might be an option also:

function trimField(segmentField, endComponent) {
  var component = segmentField.name() + '.'
  for (var idx = segmentField.children().length(); idx > endComponent; idx--)
    delete segmentField[component + idx]
}
trimField(msg.OBR['OBR.28'], 9)

Just include the indexes and it should scale for repeating segments/fields.

[rkMC]

What if the field such as OBR.28 is repeating and it has numerous entries? All have subcomponents out to the same number say 10. You want it cut down to just the first 4 subcomponent fields?
How would you reference the iteration?

[jkrebs]

What if the field such as OBR.28 is repeating and it has numerous entries? All have subcomponents out to the same number say 10. You want it cut down to just the first 4 subcomponent fields?

Maybe make the function a code template and call it like so:

for each (obr in msg.OBR) {
  for each (obr28 in obr['OBR.28']) {
    trimField(obr28, 4)
  }
}