Interface Explorer

Search and Filter Health Connect Interfaces and Connections!

Have you ever needed to view various settings across all interfaces at once? Have you ever needed to search or visulize current interface connections? If so, give Interface Explorer a try!

InterSystems "Bringing Ideas to Reality" Contest 2025

This application was originally created/published for the InterSystems "Bringing Ideas to Reality" Contest 2025.

Implemented Idea:

• DPI-I-213: Production Audit Report

Description

Interface Explorer is an application for InterSystems Health Connect that allows you to search and filter through all of your interfaces and their associated settings and connections.

View Settings Across Your Interfaces

If your production has grown to a large number of interfaces, it can sometimes be difficult to evaluate the various settings and values spread across your interfaces. This is where the Settings view of Interface Explorer can help. You can add columns for any interface setting currently set in your production (IPAddress, Port, SSLConfig, ArchiveIO, etc.):

Filter by Setting Value

You can also filter interfaces by entering multiple criteria and setting values in the search bar:

View Established Connection Information

Interface Explorer will also allow you to view and monitor the many connections that your interfaces may be making to external systems. By visiting the Connections view, you can see the status (Established, Listening, etc.) of all connections tied to your interfaces. If a connection is established, you can view both your server's connection information and the information of the third-party to which your interface is connecting. You can even see if an interface has made more than one connection.

Prerequisites

• IRIS 2022.1+ (for Embedded Python support)
• Python 3 installed on the system

Installation

There are several methods for installing this application:

1. Docker
2. Install the IPM/ZPM package
3. Manually Install as an IRIS WSGI application

Option 1: Docker

If you prefer, you can demo Interface Explorer with docker.

First, download/clone the repo to your local computer:

git clone https://github.com/jamerfort/interface-explorer.git

Build and connect to your instance:

cd ./interface-explorer

# Rebuild/start the image
docker compose up --build -d

Access the demo at http://localhost:32800/interface-explorer/

Stop your instance:

# Stop your containers
docker compose down 

Option 2: Install the IPM/ZPM package

Use zpm to install the interface-explorer package:

USER>zpm

=============================================================================
|| Welcome to the Package Manager Shell (ZPM). version 0.7.4               ||
|| Enter q/quit to exit the shell. Enter ?/help to view available commands ||
|| Current registry https://pm.community.intersystems.com                  ||
=============================================================================
zpm:USER>install interface-explorer

Access the application at https://your-server/interface-explorer/.

Option 3: Manually Install as an IRIS WSGI application

First, download/clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/jamerfort/interface-explorer.git

Install the required python modules:

python3 -m pip install --target /InterSystems/IRIS/mgr/python -r interface-explorer/requirements.txt

Navigate to System Adminstration > Security > Applications > Web Applications in IRIS/Health Connect. Click Create New Web Application.

Fill in the following fields:

Set any additional parameters as desired.

Click Save button.

Usage

Changing the View

To switch the view between the Settings-Table view and the Connections view, click the Connections and Settings buttons in the top right of the page. Also, the Refresh button can be used to refresh the data on the page.

Displaying Settings as Columns

On the Settings view, you can add any interface setting as a column to the table. These columns will continue to display in all future visits to this page. To reset the columns displayed, click the Reset button to the far-right of the table header.

Searching/Filtering Settings

While you can add columns directly to your view (while on the Settigs view), using the Search Bar will allow you to dynamically add columns
based on settings that match the query provided to the Search Bar. See Settings Queries below for details on searching.

Clicking on a Search criteria, will remove that criteria from the filtering logic. Clicking the X will remove all criteria.

Showing Connections

On the Connections view, you can monitor and view the various connections that your interfaces are making to external systems.

On the left side of the view are incoming connections to services. On the right side of the view are the outgoing connections from operations. Processes are listed in the middle.

Each service and operation have two colored indicators for status: 1) job indicator (is the interface enabled?) and 2) connection indicator (is the connection established?).

If an interface does not have an established connection, Interface Explorer attempts to fill in the information with configured host and ports.

The connection information refreshes every 15 seconds, but if you need to trigger a manual refresh, click the Refresh button at the top-right.

Settings Queries

Interface Explorer's search bar allows you to filter interfaces by specific criteria, regular expressions, or simple string matching.

Regular Expressions

If the search query has the form /regex pattern/flags, the provided regular expression will be used to match against setting name, setting value, and the combined value of setting=value.

The flags part of the query is optional. These flags are passed to the javascript regular expression engine. See MDN: Advanced Searching with Flags.

Setting Expressions

If the search query has the form settingName operator value, then the query attempts to match settings based on the following operators:

Simple String Matching

If the search query does not match either the regular expression pattern or the setting operator value pattern, then simple string matching is performed.

If the setting name or setting value match (case-insensitive) the given search string, then the interface matches and is shown in the results.

Multiple Queries

As you perform searches, to the left of the search bar, your list of active queries will be displayed. As you add additional queries, the results from the previous queries will be further filtered by your new queries.

For example, if you want all operations that are disabled, run the following queries:

If you would like to remove any query from the search, just click on the associated query to the left of the search bar. The x button to the left of the search bar will clear all current queries.