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data-to-insight / quality-lac-data-beta

Quality LAC data Beta project
MIT License
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Null/blank data should not be replaced with N/A on the front-end #55

Closed SLornieCYC closed 2 years ago

SLornieCYC commented 2 years ago

At the moment null (missing/blank) data items are shown as "N/A" in the front-end. For example where UPN hasn't been provided, or the fields DEC and REC on an open episode.

This is misleading because:

1) it does not correctly reflect the underlying data 2) it is unclear whether N/A means "Not Available" or "Not Applicable" (e.g. MOTHER and MC_DOB fields on a male child record).

dezog commented 2 years ago

This is a good point - "N/A" does seem to imply the missing value ought to be missing, as in your (2).

This should be changed to say something like NULL, or MISSING - any thoughts on what would feel most natural here?

I'll have to have a look into how this part of the frontend code works (bear with me, I'm by no means a javascript person), or get @kws on the case, but it feels like this should be an easy fix that we can take care of within the next week.

SLornieCYC commented 2 years ago

For me NULL seems more appropriate. That describes the absence of data without making any "judgement" about it (for want of a better word!) - to me MISSING implies that there should be a value present (which we know is not always the case).

dezog commented 2 years ago

Yeah that makes sense. I've worked out I can stick that in no problem, by editing line 39 in the file src/components/DataTable.tsx; I'll push this change & update the live tool tomorrow.

Thinking it'd be nice to put it in italics or something so it's visually clear it's not text, but that's where we reach past what I could feel sure I'm doing the right way, so will seek advice on that 😅

dezog commented 2 years ago

(Closed this and opened #59 to address adding a different style to blank cells)