Active Projects

Overview

This is a listing of currently important active projects. This is a place to see what's going on, and also a place to see where help is needed by other developers and testers. These are kind of ordered by how important they are to OpenEMR's future.

Internationalization

Date formatting

Still work to do in order to support date formats across multiple languages. Here's the forum thread discussing this.

Awaiting a Analyzer to figure out a good plan for this.

Translation database maintenance/improvement

We currently have a stable collaborative system in place to allow translation of any language. The translations are entered into a OpenEMR Translation Google Doc Spreadsheet. These instructions and scripts (README files describes the pipeline in detail) then allows conversions of the translation spreadsheet to mysql tables and allow detection and insertion of new english constants into the translation spreadsheet.

A new set of official translation tables are created daily.

Brady is maintaining this.

Calendar

Multi-facility bugs

Description of bugs:

1. Things work great with one facility
2. With two facility the bugs appear (different bugs happen with the $GLOBALS['restrict_user_facility'] turned off(default) and on)
3. When $GLOBALS['restrict_user_facility'] is turned off get following behavior. In essence the calendar only shows what is set as 'default facility' in the users settings. If you choose the facility then that user won't be available. By choosing all facilities, it will actually show all appointments from all facilities, however the scrollbar display is confusing (shows the top item), and unable to schedule an appt at anything but in the scroll bar; this also screws up what you see when scrolling through new days.
4. When $GLOBALS['restrict_user_facility'] is turned on, then only seems to work right if you place all facilities in the users settings 'Schedule facilities'. Then everything seems to work fine, but there is no option to view all facilities, which seems like should be an option. If you don' t place all facilities in the users 'schedule facilities', then you'll see other appointments at other disallowed facilties like they are on the selected on (not much of a bug since appointments shouldn' be scheduled on disallowed facilities anyways), however can only add to the allowed facility, which is good.

Seems like the bug(s) really stem from three mechanisms:

1. When choose all facilities, don't then highlight the item below it; highlight them all and that have this supported when click other buttons (moving days or adding appt)
2. With global restrict_user_facility off (default) allow users to be scheduled at all facilities.
3. With global restrict_user_facility on give option to show all facilties in calendar.

Currently linked to this tracker item and this forum thread.

Awaiting a Developer to fix this bug.

Recurring appointment bugs

This problem is discussed in this forum thread and this forum thread.

Bug described in good detail by Gayll in this bug tracker item: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2963714&group_id=60081&atid=493001

Awaiting a Developer to fix this bug.

General code base improvements

Security Vulnerability Assessment and Fixing

This project is active and has been moved to its own wiki page at Codebase Security.

Clean up use of the extract() function on post and get variable (faking them as globals)

In global.php, use of wrapping POST and GET variables within extract() function; this is a security issue. The globals.php has been modified to excise this disease: http://github.com/openemr/openemr/commit/70038c1c6de77242c28acac2cb764d994b0a98bd

So, a script can turn it off by making $fake_register_globals=false before including the interface/globals.php script. Of course, each script will need to be tested, so this will be a slow walk through. Probably a good idea to include this in all new scripts also. Then, when the code is free of this disease, this mechanism also can be removed.

This will be a ongoing multi-developer walk through of the code and is incorporated into the full security walk through detailed on the Codebase Security wiki page'

Clean up magic quotes, prevent sql-injection, and prepare for PHP6

THIS PROJECT IS NOW DEPRECATED, AND WE ARE INSTEAD GOING WITH THE PROJECT DISCUSSED HERE: Codebase Security

Plan to pass all input data through functions in the openemr/library/formdata.inc.php file before inserting into mysql database. This is useful for following reasons:

1. Will centralize input validation
2. Will centralize sql-injection blocking
3. Fix the escaping bugs(magic quotes) that are seen throughout OpenEMR when inputting the apostrophe character
4. Will allow easy migration to php6 (since magic quotes will no longer exist in php6)
5. Simplify support for other database software

Objectives of openemr/library/formdata.inc.php functions:

formData() - This function will remove escapes (if magic quotes is set), and then places database specific escapes to ensure safe database insertion of variable. Input accepts POST, GET, or REQUEST variables, and there is an option to trim the input.

formDataCore() - This function will remove escapes (if magic quotes is set), and then places database specific escapes to ensure safe database insertion of variable. Input accepts any variable, and there is an option to trim the input.

strip_escape_custom() - This function will remove escapes (if magic quotes is set). Input accepts any variable

add_escape_custom() - This functions places database specific escapes to ensure safe database insertion of variable. Input accepts any variable

Timeline objectives:

12/2009-1/2009: Clean up all the apostrophe input bugs and get OpenEMR to work with magic quotes turned on and off.

01/2009-??????: Replace all calls for get_magic_quotes_gpc() and mysql_real_escape_string() with the formdata.inc.php functions (moderate amount of work).

02/2009-??????: Systematically migrate all scripts into formdata.inc.php functions. (large amount of work)

Specific Code changes and dates:

12/01/2009: Committed a cleaner openemr/library/formdata.inc.php to CVS and will include in patch#5 for 3.1.0. Read file for details. --Bradymiller 00:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

12/05/2009: Committed an even cleaner openemr/library/formdata.inc.php to CVS and will include in patch#5 for 3.1.0. Read file for details. --Bradymiller 09:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

12/05/2009 and 12/06/2009: Focused changes in calendar appt, calendar searching, and bookmarks to make compatible with both magic quotes settings (on or off). Files modified:

• openemr/interface/main/finder/patient_select.php
• openemr/interface/main/calendar/find_patient_popup.php
• openemr/interface/main/calendar/add_edit_event.php
• openemr/interface/main/calendar/modules/PostCalendar/pntemplates/default/user/ajax_search.html
• openemr/interface/main/calendar/modules/PostCalendar/pnuser.php
• openemr/interface/usergroup/addrbook_list.php
• openemr/interface/usergroup/addrbook_edit.php

--Bradymiller 11:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

12/11/2009: Changes in CAMOS to make compatible with both magic quotes settings (on or off). Files modified:

• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/admin.php
• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/ajax_save.php
• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/content_parser.php
• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/new.php
• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/save.php
• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/rx_print.php
• openemr/interface/forms/CAMOS/notegen.php

--Bradymiller 22:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

12/21/2009: Quick conversion in the admin facilities edit page

• openemr/interface/usergroup/facility_admin.php

--Bradymiller 09:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

1/22/2009: Quick fixes to allow apostrophes in drug names

• openemr/library/ajax/prescription_drugname_lookup.php
• openemr/library/classes/Prescription.class.php

--Bradymiller 09:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

1/23/2009: Migrated the heart of the controller/smarty stuff (does not include the postnuke smarty stuff) to formdata.inc.php. No change in functionality, just centralized the input processing and string processing(before database insertion) functions. During this testing, noted a bug in the processing (if magic quotes are on then sometimes strings get slashes removed twice before going to database, thus single slashes inputted in strings may get lost; minor but worth pursuing. For example when enter a prescription it goes through the library/classes/Controller.class.php populate() function and the library/classes/ORDataObject.class.php persist() function; hence if magic quotes are on the slashes will be removed twice)

• openemr/library/classes/Controller.class.php
• openemr/library/classes/ORDataObject.class.php

--Bradymiller 09:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

4/09/2009: Migrated the translation admin gui

• openemr/interface/language/lang_constant.php
• openemr/interface/language/lang_definition.php
• openemr/interface/language/lang_language.php
• openemr/interface/language/language.php

quick note: Smarty cleans up its variables via pnVarCleanFromInput() function in openemr/interface/main/calendar/includes/pnAPI.php file (this function will strip slashes if needed, however doesn't escape characters for database insertion). Smarty can prepare for database commands via pnVarPrepForStore() function in openemr/interface/main/calendar/includes/pnAPI.php file (this function ca not be used with pnVarCleanFromInput() and simply adds slashes if magic quotes not on, so will need to consider securing this further in future) (both of these functions are only likely specific for calendar smarty system).

quick note #2: Should be able to incorporate this throughout all the Controller code by simply modifying the functions populate_object(&$obj) in the openemr/library/classes/Controller.class.php file and the function persist() in openemr/library/classes/ORDataObject.class.php.(This was DONE on 1/23/2009)

Currently linked to this tracker item and this forum thread.