REDCap Entity is a software development library that simplifies the development of REDCap External Modules by providing tools to design, store, manage, enter, view and edit novel data types needed by a REDCap Module.
- REDCap >= 8.7.0
REDCap Entity is available in the REDCap Repo. To install it follow these steps:
- Access your REDCap installation's View modules available in the REDCap repo button at Control Center > External Modules to download REDCap Entity.
- Once downloaded, enable REDCap Entity. The module will be enabled globally.
- Clone this repo into
<redcap-root>/modules/redcap_entity_v<version_number>. - Go to Control Center > External Modules and enable REDCap Entity. The module will be enabled globally.
REDCap Entity is a software development library that simplifies the development of REDCap External Modules by providing tools to design, store, manage, enter, view and edit novel data types needed by a REDCap Module. This module is a dependency for other modules such as UF CTS-IT's REDCap Project Ownership and REDCap OnCore Client.
A module might need to manage a data type that does not exist in core REDCap. For example, REDCap Project Ownership introduces the concept of a project owner. This is a person who acts as owner/custodian for a project. These ownership details have to be stored, retrieved, displayed and edited. In some cases a large list of owners and related facts need to be displayed, filtered, and sorted. REDCap Entity provides a set of functions a REDCap module developer can use to define the things to be stored as well as how they should be displayed.
REDCap Entity helps a developer define these details:
- The custom content storage. (e.g. it will create a SQL table)
- Implement a form to add/edit your content
- Implement a page that lists your content
- Implement features to help you navigate through the list like a pager, filters, etc.
REDCap Entity allows a moderate amount of code to add functionality that looks like this to a REDCap Module:
REDCap Entity will present an Entity DB Manager in the REDCap Control Panel. It gives an admin the ability to create or delete the data managed by REDCap Entity on a per-entity basis.
A complete development guide for using REDCap Entity in your REDCap External Module is available at REDCap Entity Developers Guide. A very simple module that demonstrates REDCap Entity can be found at https://github.com/ctsit/organizations_demo