Record Map with Repeating Fields

Hey Doug,

It's been a very long time :)

So ... no, you don't need a complex record map to do this, but the mechanism takes just a little more work using a "simple" record map. The record map feature doesn't let you set a Composite field as repeating, which is why we need to deal with those "grouped" OBX segments/fields using a different method.

What I've done is define the RecordMap with individual fields for everything before the first OBX field, and then define the rest of the record as a single, repeating field. You can then iterate over that last field and parse out the individual HL7 field values with $PIECE, or turn them into a $LIST and  reference the elements by numeric index. The only delimiters you'll need to set for the record map are a "|" as the field delimiter and a "~" for the repetition delimiter.

Here's a sample record map layout:

Along with setting OBXSegs as repeating, I set the MAXLEN DataType parameter to something large enough to accommodate all of the fields. Also note the Discard field; the sample data in your post included a leading "|," so that needs to be treated as though there's an initial empty field in each record. Including a dummy field to consume it makes things a bit more understandable when addressing the subsequent fields.

Here's one way you might iterate over the repeating record map field:

As you surmised in a follow-up to Nora's earlier posts, the Complex Record Map functionality is really only required when the record structure varies from line to line in the input data.