Splitting multi-valued fields on item_delim

[adamstegman]

We have to do (seg.field || "").split(seg.item_delim) a lot, and it's pretty silly. What would a good API to do this from the gem look like?

Ideally it would be something like obx.units[4], but that would break the existing API and might be confusing when some fields are arrays and some are strings. So maybe this should be a new method.

What about something like HL7::Message::Segment.split_field(obx.units)? It's quite verbose but I'm not sure where else to hang the function. It should handle nil and return an empty array.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

[jeremiemv]

👍

[mogox]

What do you think about something like obx.fetch_field(:units, 4)? With the option of sending a third parameter as a default value just like fetch. What you think?

[adamstegman]

Oh, that sounds great! 👍

[Stratus3D]

👍

[micred]

👍