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FHIR Requests and Responses

This topic discusses the requests and responses used by FHIR servers and the FHIR Interoperability Adapter.

For information about the requests and responses used by the InterSystems FHIR client, see FHIR Clients.

Non-production Requests/Responses

For a FHIR server that does not use an interoperability production:

Accessing FHIR Payloads

By default, when a FHIR request is received by the REST handler, it stores the FHIR payload in the Json property of a Request object (HS.FHIRServer.API.Data.RequestOpens in a new tab), which automatically puts the JSON structure into a dynamic object. FHIR requests that contain XML are converted to JSON before being represented as a dynamic object in the Json property. Responses from the FHIR server (HS.FHIRServer.API.Data.ResponseOpens in a new tab) also contain a Json property for FHIR data.

Working with FHIR data begins by getting access to the Json property of the request or response. Once you have the FHIR payload, you can manipulate it as a dynamic object. For examples, see FHIR Data.

Interoperability Requests/Responses

For a FHIR server, FHIR Interoperability Adapter, or FHIR client that leverages an interoperability production:

These classes include a property QuickStreamId that points to the FHIR payload.

Accessing FHIR Payloads

When a FHIR implementation is using an interoperability production, you access the FHIR payload of the message object differently than implementations where a production is not used. In production-based implementations, the request and response messages (HS.FHIRServer.Interop.RequestOpens in a new tab and HS.FHIRServer.Interop.ResponseOpens in a new tab) contain a QuickStreamId that is used to access a QuickStream object containing the FHIR payload. Though an interoperability request message also contains a Request property of type HS.FHIRServer.API.Data.RequestOpens in a new tab, this Request property cannot be used to access the FHIR payload because its Json property is transient (the same is true for interoperability responses). As a result, a business host in the production that needs to access the FHIR payload must use the QuickStreamID to obtain the payload.

If the payload is in JSON format, the business host can access the payload and convert it to a dynamic object in order to modify it. For example, a BPL business process could use the following code to access and modify the FHIR payload of a request message that is in JSON format:

 //Identify payload as a Patient resource and convert to dynamic object
 if ((request.Request.RequestMethod="POST") & (request.Request.RequestPath="Patient"))
 {
   set stream = ##class(HS.SDA3.QuickStream).%OpenId(request.QuickStreamId)
   set myPatient = ##class(%DynamicObject).%FromJSON(stream)

   // Modify Patient resource
   do myPatient.%Set("active", 0, "boolean")

   //Update payload with modified Patient resource
   do myPatient.%ToJSON(stream)
   do stream.%Save()
 }

For more examples of manipulating FHIR data as dynamic objects, see FHIR Data.

ObjectScript Applications

If an ObjectScript application needs to retrieve resources from the Resource Repository, it can build a non-production request object (HS.FHIRServer.API.Data.RequestOpens in a new tab) before dispatching it to the endpoint’s Service. If the application is retrieving data, it is returned as the non-production response object (HS.FHIRServer.API.Data.ResponseOpens in a new tab). For more details, see Direct Calls to DispatchRequest.

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