Entry format extension has no effect on a date item

[KhumboLihonga]

Describe the bug
Setting the entry format on a date item has no effect.

Component
SDC library

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open the catalog app
2. Select date picker
3. The format on the UI is shown as 'dd/MM/y'
4. But the item in the questionnaire has an entry format of 'yyyy-mm-dd'

Expected behavior
I expect when I select a date using the date picker, it should appear in the format set in the entry format extension.

Screenshots
Below is what the date item looks like with the entry format set to 'yyyy-mm-dd':

Smartphone (please complete the following information):

• Device: Samsung A12
• Android version: 11
• Build number: RP1A.200720.012.A127FXXU4AUK1
• Version: 30

Additional context
N/A

[Gental-Giant]

@f-odhiambo Kindly take a look.

[shelaghm]

Is this because the device date format overrides the extension? what do you think @jingtang10?

[jingtang10]

@PallaviGanorkar can you please take a look at this?

[PallaviGanorkar]

Sure @jingtang10

[PallaviGanorkar]

@jingtang10 As per discussion in issue #1418 and current implementation, Date entry format hint is displayed from locale date format, entry format defined in Questionnaire is not considered. Please confirm, what is expected behavior?

[jingtang10]

Thanks @KhumboLihonga for creating this issue. @PallaviGanorkar yes that's right - we do not consider the entry format extension right now.

The issue with the entry format extension, however, is that it's not really "computable". In the spec (https://build.fhir.org/ig/HL7/sdc/rendering.html#entryFormat) it says this:

This provides a string that helps to guide entry of formatted text and often appears directly "behind" the control to be filled. For example, "nnn-nnn-nnnn" for a North American phone number, "YYYY-MM-DD" for a date, "nnnn nnnn nnnn nnnn" for certain types of credit card numbers, etc.

The keyword here is "guide". the entry format extension is guiding the user to input. But not necessarily used as validation. The FHIR questionnaire is a standard for all platforms. My question is how can we interpret this string in Android and be consistent with other langauges / APIs people might use to interpret entry format? Is this guaranteed to be universally consistent? Someone might use the same questionnaire in a .NET environment, or in Python, or in other langauges with other date libraries. Do we know that the entry format string is going to be generating the same validation result?

If we have confidence here, we can probably use entry format extension. But otherwise I'm not so sure.

[KhumboLihonga]

@jingtang10 Thanks for clarifying this. I assumed it was being used because it is included in the catalog app date picker questionnaire. I think it would be good to remove the extension from there to avoid further confusion.

Well, the reason I shared this issue is that when using the catalog app, the date format is automatically set to dd/MM/y as shown in the screenshot above (and is the preferred format for us). However, when using questionnaires in our app on the same phone, the date format is automatically set to M/d/yy as shown below. So I figured the entry extension may be responsible for this but now I have no idea. Any thoughts?

[PallaviGanorkar]

@KhumboLihonga Have you changed your device locale by any chance?

[KhumboLihonga]

@PallaviGanorkar No, I haven't. These two screenshots is me switching from the catalog app to our app. Also, the language of the phone is set to English (United Kingdom) so I expect the catalog app format i.e. dd/MM/y to be used.

[PallaviGanorkar]

@KhumboLihonga Could you please confirm few things

1. Which SDC lib version you are using?
2. Open date picker popup and check format after trying to edit date and confirm if it is same with expected format.

[KhumboLihonga]

1. In our gradle, we are using org.smartregister:data-capture:0.1.0-beta05-preview-SNAPSHOT in the FHIR Core app
2. When trying to edit the date, the format is m/d/yy which is incorrect

@f-odhiambo @Gental-Giant could this issue be FHIR Core related?

[PallaviGanorkar]

As Discussed @KhumboLihonga , Both date Picker and Input box hint show same date format i.e. US locale format though device Setting has UK locale which is incorrect. On other hand catalog app shows correct UK local date format.
So, @KhumboLihonga could you please conform, other app is not setting locale at app level?

[KhumboLihonga]

@PallaviGanorkar Thank you for your assistance. Yes, it's being set at the application level. I'll close this issue.