GSoC 2021: The REST of Administration

Description

In order to meet our goal of migrating our administration functions to our new micro frontend framework, we need to make sure all of our administration functions are accessible through REST APIs. This is a unique opportunity to work at the heart of OpenMRS and with some of the most experienced OpenMRS developers while extending the capabilities of the platform.

The Legacy UI uses an extension point on its admin page to render a list of administration links for installed modules. This list can be seen on the advanced administration screen of the Reference Application (demo.openmrs.org) as everything listed after the "Modules" section in the third (rightmost) column. The "Modules" section is hardcoded onto this admin screen, but everything below it is dynamically generated based on which modules are installed and running in OpenMRS.

Modules implement the AdministrationSectionExt interface (examples: Basic Module and HTML Form Entry) to participate in this list. The goal of this project will be to find a backwards-compatible way to expose this list via the REST API to properly authenticated users (i.e., users who could see this list in the admin page of the Legacy UI should be able to retrieve the list of modules and their links via the REST API). This REST endpoint will be needed to allow a Micro Frontend-based administration application to discover and render the appropriate links.

Skills Needed

• Proficiency with Java
• Experience with designing and/or writing REST APIs
• Interest in learning about the Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard

Objectives

• Create REST endpoints for managing administration functions that are not yet available via REST - COMPLETED
• Wherever possible & appropriate, build FHIR-based endpoints within the FHIR2 module (may not be relevant to this particular project) - COMPLETED

Issues

Resources

• OpenMRS 3.0: A Frontend Framework that enables collaboration and better User Experience
• REST Web Services API For Clients
• FHIR 101: OpenMRS Strategy, Tools, FHIR API, and Help
• Project proposal
• Project Talk thread
• Project Updates Talk thread
• Wiki page

Extra Credit

• Finding a way to support the admin list for installed modules that not only works for existing implementations (backwards compatible), but also works without requiring the Legacy UI module to be installed.