View showing the empty records that are created. Notice, only one field, the email address was entered when creating this new patient.

This error still occurs in OpenMRS Version: 1.3.0.11 RC2 Build 4648. Thanks to Martin for helping me run this test on his new install.

Is it re-adding empty rows? Ideally it wouldn't void and then add the same value, but if someone fills out a form with empty textboxes openmrs won't know if the user emptied the box to essentially delete a past value.

This occurs when adding a new patient, for any person attribute fields that are left blank. These fields (rows) have never existed before, so they need not be created and left empty. See the initial screen shot, taken right after adding a new patient, not editing an existing patient.

What if a blank value has a different meaning than a nonexistent value?

When editing a patient multiple times they are not getting multiple (duplicate) blank rows, so I'm going to close this.

I'd agree with James on this one -- the UI should allow for person attributes to be removed (any existing value voided and not replaced) rather than storing empty strings for person attributes. Likewise, leaving person attributes blank should not create a bunch of empty string values in the database. If a blank value needs to be stored for some reason, then it should be the exception, not the default behavior (IMHO).

But this is low priority, since the system is not creating duplicate blank rows. Re-opening as a low priority ticket for the OpenMRS Someday milestone (i.e., just shy of wontfix).

This defect has become a major priority with the usage of person attributes of date type. (org.openmrs.util.AttributableDate)

The empty strings of the date type case the list of patients not to display when searching for patients. The following error appears in the catalina.out log.

WARN - PersonAttribute.getHydratedObject(417) |2008-10-14 08:37:01,884| Unable to hydrate value: for type: 11InLocalityDate org.openmrs.api.APIException: Unable to parse the given string: as a date object

This doesn't seem to be stopping any processing on my end for the main patient search. Does the patient list not show up for you? What page are you seeing this on ?

I was not able to search for patients on the main patient search page. The list of patients wasn't being displayed. Deleting the blank person_attribute's solved the problem. It's working OK with new person_attributes being added that are blank. I have reduced the priority to minor, and it will remain open since it is causing warnings in the log, and it shouldn't be the default behavior, per bmamlin, see above.