(fix) O3-2654: Unable to edit visit attributes when editing visit details

[usamaidrsk]

Requirements

• This PR has a title that briefly describes the work done including the ticket number. If there is a ticket, make sure your PR title includes a conventional commit label. See existing PR titles for inspiration.
• My work conforms to the OpenMRS 3.0 Styleguide and design documentation.
• My work includes tests or is validated by existing tests.

Summary

• Fix error on updating visit attributes, by adding separate handler for visit attribute update.

Screenshots

update-visit-attributes.mp4

Related Issue

O3-2654

Other

[vasharma05]

Hi @dkayiwa !
Do you know why are we not able to update the visit attributes in the visit update payload itself? Is there anything we can work out on this? Updating the visit attributes separately will bring up many edge cases.
For more info, please feel free to refer the ticket assigned.

[ibacher]

@vasharma05 @usamaidrsk The way to deal with issues like this would be to open in a Jira ticket in the Webservices.REST project that says something like: "Add ability to update attributes as part of the visit payload" with a description of what you're trying to accomplish and what syntax should be supported. You can add the tag "community-priority" in Jira and it should show up on the appropriate board. In most cases like these you're simply looking for a feature no one has ever asked for before, so ask for the feature (which is what a ticket is for).

[vasharma05]

Hi @ibacher!
I actually thought that this might be a part of the well thought design, rather than not being implemented since no one asked for it. Bad assumption from my side.

I'll create a ticket and update the ticket in the O3-2654.
Thanks a lot @ibacher !

[vasharma05]

Expecting a better solution with REST Ticket: https://openmrs.atlassian.net/browse/RESTWS-926

[ibacher]

@vasharma05 hmmm… actually there is an issue with updates vs creates and it comes down to ambiguity in JSON. Ideally, what we want to submit as an edit is something that records the changes we want to make. There are some specified syntaxes for this (JSON Patch and XML Patch) which we don’t support. Without either an explicit patching syntax or sending the full resource with each request, the backend has no way to differentiate between an “append this attribute” request vs a “delete all attributes but this one” request or even a “delete all attributes”.

Theoretically, the principles of REST mean that we should be sending the entire representation of the resource as part of the PUT request, so we do need to be sure (on the front end side) that the update includes the full visit payload with the modifications made.

[ibacher]

The main implication of the above is that we cannot request a partial resource and that modifications need to be applied to the fully downloaded resource, which may mean that we need slightly different code to handle “creates” vs “edits”.

[vasharma05]

This is what I also encountered in the patient registration, when dealing with identifiers. If you see, there were cases handled where a few identifiers were updated, deleted and added simultaneously, which I belive cannot be done in a single REST request, hence I asked @usamaidrsk to follow the same steps here as well.