Blank Values

[Susan Ferraz]

I translate from HL7 to XML. When a value is blank in the HL7 message, for instance, Insurance Name, then the “attribute” insurance name is omitted from the XML Insurance Element. This causes problems in the application that receives the XML message. The application expects cetain attributes to exist in the XML even if the value of the attribute is blank.

If the field in the XLT is a TABLE I don’t have a problem because I can specify a default value.

Does anyone know how to resolve this problem? Do I have to add a tcl code in every COPY to check if the value is blank and then add some blank values to the field? If so do you have a sample tcl code that I could use in this scenario?

Thanks!

Topic

[Charlie Bursell]

Why not specify default values in your schema?

[Susan Ferraz]

Hi Charlie,

I didn’t know I could specify a default value in my DTD. I’m very new to all of this.

I specified a blank default value as below:

and it works!!!

Thanks, Susan

[Author]

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