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04 — Message Browser

Mirth Connect “Messages” tab on a channel, OR the global Messages search view. The “find one specific message that flowed through” tool.

What this screen shows in Mirth

The Message Browser is a three-pane layout:

┌──────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              │                                         │
│  FILTERS     │           MESSAGE LIST                  │
│  (left)      │           (top right)                   │
│              │                                         │
│  [time range]│  ┌──┬────────────┬─────────┬──────────┐ │
│  [status]    │  │# │ Received   │ Status  │ Errors   │ │
│  [conn type] │  ├──┼────────────┼─────────┼──────────┤ │
│  [content    │  │1 │ 11:02:33   │ SENT    │ 0        │ │
│   search]    │  │2 │ 11:02:34   │ ERROR   │ 1        │ │
│  [advanced]  │  │  │ ...        │ ...     │          │ │
│              │  └──┴────────────┴─────────┴──────────┘ │
│              ├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              │           MESSAGE DETAIL                │
│              │           (bottom right)                │
│              │   [tabs: Raw | Processed Raw |          │
│              │    Transformed | Encoded | Sent |       │
│              │    Response | Mappings | Errors ]       │
│              │                                         │
└──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────┘

The left filter panel has:

  • Time range (preset buttons: Last hour / Today / Last 7 days / Custom)
  • Status checkboxes: Received, Filtered, Queued, Sent, Errored, Pending
  • Connector type filter (Source / specific Destination)
  • Free-text content search across raw payload
  • An “Advanced Search” button that opens a modal with field-level matchers (e.g. PID-3 = "12345" for HL7 patient ID)
  • “Quick Search” by message ID

The message list is a scrollable virtualized table sorted by received-time desc. Each row shows: sequence #, timestamp, status badge, error count, connector name. Clicking a row populates the detail panel at the bottom.

The detail panel uses a tab strip across multiple transformation stages — in Mirth’s pipeline a message moves through Raw → Filtered → Transformed → Encoded → Sent → Response, and each stage can be inspected.

What we’re adapting

A Messages search page (/messages) with the same three-pane shape:

  • Left: filter sidebar. Time range, status (Received / Delivered / Failed / Pending), interface, subscription, free-text content search, message-ID lookup.
  • Top right: virtualized list with one row per message, sortable by received time, status colour-coded.
  • Bottom right (or as a slide-over panel on smaller screens): selected message detail.

The filter-list-detail pattern is the right shape because operators search for messages starting from a complaint (“a result didn’t show up at 3pm”) — so a fast time-bounded search with status filtering is the primary task.

What we’re explicitly NOT copying

  • The dense, no-padding table. Use generous row height + monospace timestamps.
  • The 8-tab detail panel. Our pipeline is simpler (Raw → Parsed → Delivered/Errored) — see 05-message-detail.md for the simplified tab scheme.
  • The “Advanced Search” modal popup. Field-level matchers should be inline pill-style filters that the user can stack, not a separate dialog.
  • Hard-to-find sort: sort headers should be visibly clickable, not right-click context menus as in Swing.
  • The Swing-style chrome (grey panels, beveled splitter bars). Use a clean splitter or a flex layout.

Which ticket implements our equivalent

#402 (UI: message viewer — search, drill-down, raw + parsed view). Secondary readers: #403 (DLQ uses a similar filter+list shape, narrower scope) and #404 (subscription delivery history — a list-of-attempts view that mirrors this layout per subscription).