How to escape the ampersand (&) character in an Xlate

[Darrell Glover]

I need to set a URL that includes an ampersand to a variable and then concat it with patient/accession values.  It appears that Cloverleaf considers the & as a delimiter, so the concat is not working correctly.  Does anyone know how to escape the ampersand.  For example, & is used for XML.

Thanks!

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[David Barr]

You can use \T\.

[Darrell Glover]

Thanks for the quick reply, David!  When I try using \T\, it just puts it in as plain text.  See my screenshots below from the xlate and the result in the testing tool.   Did I do something wrong?

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[Jerry Sawa]

Try using “concat”

first parameter will be everything in the URL up to “/mdweb”

second parameter “=&”

third parameter will be everything after”PatientID”

 

• This reply was modified 4 days, 1 hour ago by Jerry Sawa.

[Jerry Sawa]

Or create a variable called @ampersand, value as “=&”, then plug the variable into the URL.

[Darrell Glover]

Every time I try to use =& (either by itself or as a variable) Cloverleaf thinks it’s a delimiter and breaks the segment.

[Darrell Glover]

See the attached screenshots of the xlate and results from the testing tool.  Thanks!

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[Jim Kosloskey]

The idea for the \T\ is the receiving system should revert that back to an & if it is following the HL/7 standard. So, you see it as the \T\ in the message you send and then the receiving system changes that back to &.

Try that and see if the receiving system behaves properly. If not, let us know.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Darrell Glover]

Thank you for the clarification!  I will give that a try.

[Dirk Engels]

If you use a url you will have to use url encoding. This replaces special character by a % notation.

https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.ASP

 

 

[Charlie Bursell]

Did you check to see if the recipient supports escape characters?  If they do then they should interpret the \T\ as an ampersand.  If not, then one of the suggested work arounds.

Its amazing that after all this time Cloverleaf does not recognize HL7 escape characters.

See this web page: https://docs.intersystems.com/latest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=EHL72_escape_sequences

 

[Jay Hammond]

What do you see if you change the Detail level to 1?

I see what you’re talking about with the ampersand being removed when I have Detail level set to 4, but if I change it to 1 I see the following:

(0).OBR(0) : >|1|271538248^HNAM_ORDERID|20066091^EPC|343023^PLATELET|||20190926092700||https://server.local/mdweb/LauncherInterface.aspx?host=https://server.local.webmd&PatientID=3000837&accesionnum=271538248|||||20190926093100|BLOOD&Blood|0000819^Test^An^K^^MD^^^Doctor #||||000002019269005004^HNA_ACCN~18295341^HNA_ACCNID||20190926092500||LA|||1^^0^20190926093000^^S~^^^^^ST|||||||||20190926093000<0xa><

This is what I see with Detail level set to 4:

0(0).OBR(0).#9(0).[0].[0] : >https://server.local/mdweb/LauncherInterface.aspx?host=https://server.local.webmd&lt;
0(0).OBR(0).#9(0).[0].[1] : >PatientID=3000837<
0(0).OBR(0).#9(0).[0].[2] : >accesionnum=271538248<

We’re on Cloverleaf 2022.09.03.01

[Charlie Bursell]

A method I should have mentioned which I used many times in the past.  Simply modify the encoding characters in the MSH.  Change the ampersand to an exclamation point or something.  I have even used unprintable characters for encoding.

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