CODEWITHSUNDEEP
hl7-fhir
Beika Zhan
Beika Zhan

Reputation: 1

FHIR .NET API How to support Unknown Member in Resource?

I am working with a FHIR server that has Customized member in the resource.

Say if we receive a Patient with the following 

xml = "<Patient xmlns='http://hl7.org/fhir'><hasSuperPower></hasSuperPower></Patient>";

How do I add the extra tag support in the FHIR .NET API so I can work with this Customized Resource? (so that the Deserilizer can process it and put it in a Patient Object.)

I have read from Mirjam Baltus 's post that the Model classes can be enhanced because they are all declared as "Partial class". Does this mean I have to work with the FHIR API source code and add my own Partial class there and then re-compile it?

Would there be a way that I can just use the DLL from Nuget without have to touch the source code?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 265

Answers (2)

Mirjam Baltus
Mirjam Baltus

Reputation: 2299

I've answered this in the Google forum as well, and agree with Lloyd.

If you receive a Patient with a <hasSuperPower> tag, that is not a FHIR compliant Patient. FHIR has an excellent way to communicate data that doesn't fit in any of the standard fields, called extensions. If you use these, there is no need to write extra code to handle non-FHIR resources, and you can just use the existing libraries without having to change anything to them.

The superpower ability could look like this, and be FHIR compliant:

<Patient xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <extension url="http://mirjams.example.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/super-patient">
    <valueBoolean value="true"/>
  </extension>
</Patient>

I'd also like to point out this blog by Brian Postlethwaite about custom resource properties: https://brianpos.com/2018/05/03/code-generation-fhir-custom-resources/

Upvotes: 2

Lloyd McKenzie
Lloyd McKenzie

Reputation: 6793

Why would you use a customized element rather than the standard extension element? Adding custom elements in this way is not compliant with the standard, won't work with any of the public test servers, won't interoperate with other FHIR systems and won't work with the reference implementations. Have you looked at the extensibility portion of the spec?

Upvotes: 5

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