FHIR Chat · How should a FHIR server report version? · implementers

Stream: implementers

Topic: How should a FHIR server report version?

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 08 2019 at 16:11):

Sorry if this is an FAQ ...

How is a FHIR Server supposed to report the version of FHIR it supports, e.g. should an STU3 server return STU3 through some API (and maybe also the specific dot level)? [Not the compatibilityStatement -- that seems way too expensive to simply report which version)

view this post on Zulip Lloyd McKenzie (Nov 08 2019 at 17:23):

http://build.fhir.org/capabilitystatement-operation-versions.html

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 08 2019 at 18:31):

@Lloyd McKenzie - thanks. This seems to return dotted version numbers; is there a means to return the "logical release", e.g. DSTU2 vs STU3 vs R4 vs R5, etc.?

view this post on Zulip Jose Costa Teixeira (Nov 08 2019 at 19:53):

http://build.fhir.org/valueset-FHIR-version.html

view this post on Zulip Jose Costa Teixeira (Nov 08 2019 at 19:54):

this is a formal valueset not sure if this helps...

view this post on Zulip Grahame Grieve (Nov 08 2019 at 19:57):

DSTU2 = 1.0
STU3 = 3.0
R4 = 4.0
R5 = 4.1 right now, but that will change next month

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 08 2019 at 22:32):

OK, that's what we need. I don't expect (at this point) our FHIR server to need to differentiate dot-level version changes. So, which FHIR REST API would/should return this or is the only mechanism the capabilitystatement-operation-versions that Lloyd mentioned? What do servers link Vonk and others do or is is not specified so it's 'proprietary' ?

view this post on Zulip Alexander Kiel (Nov 09 2019 at 07:05):

@John Silva You can use [base]/metadata?_elements=fhirVersion which returns a subsetted resource and is quite fast on HAPI and Vonk.

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 09 2019 at 13:00):

@Alexander Kiel thanks. I tried that on Grahame's test server and it returns the complete list of resources, not what I need, I'm looking simply for the 'major' or logical FHIR server versions, e.g. 'STU3' vs 'R4' vs 'R5'. I suppose I could send the dotted version number and additionally add the 'logical' version but I'm looking to find an 'official way' of doing this.

http://test.fhir.org/r4/metadata?_elements=fhirVersion

view this post on Zulip Alexander Kiel (Nov 09 2019 at 13:04):

@John Silva With the right Accept header Grahame's test server also returns "only" the version:

$ curl -H 'Accept:application/fhir+json' -s http://test.fhir.org/r4/metadata?_elements=fhirVersion | jq .
{
  "resourceType": "CapabilityStatement",
  "id": "FhirServer",
  "status": "active",
  "date": "2019-11-09T13:03:14.391Z",
  "kind": "instance",
  "fhirVersion": "4.0.1",
  "format": [
    "application/fhir+xml",
    "application/fhir+json"
  ]
}

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 09 2019 at 13:13):

Hmm, I just noticed that Grahame's test server actually returns exactly what I was asking for:

http://test.fhir.org/r4/$versions

{
"resourceType" : "Parameters",
"parameter" : [
{
"name" : "version",
"valueString" : "r4"
}
]
}

So, is that FHIR standards compliant? If so, that's what I need (to implement).

view this post on Zulip Alexander Kiel (Nov 09 2019 at 13:17):

As I read it here the $version operation is only needed if a server implements multiple versions. So I would not depend on it.

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 09 2019 at 13:49):

@Alexander Kiel - in our case we are implementing the FHIR server and need to support multiple versions, so we could support this $versions API for our needs. I'm just trying to make sure that the valueString="r4" is a FHIR compliant way of representing versions; everywhere else it seems to talk about dotted version numbers.

(and the $versions interface also has a default property which isn't shown in test server)

view this post on Zulip Alexander Kiel (Nov 09 2019 at 13:52):

Yes it talks about dotted versions. I would just ask Grahame what he thinks about this.

view this post on Zulip Grahame Grieve (Nov 09 2019 at 20:16):

that's a bug in my server.I just fixed it in the source

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Nov 09 2019 at 21:19):

Oh, I was hoping that was a legal return value for version!

view this post on Zulip Christiaan Knaap (Mar 17 2020 at 12:30):

@John Silva If it is still relevant: we implemented $version in Vonk 3.3.

view this post on Zulip John Silva (Mar 17 2020 at 12:45):

Thanks @Christiaan Knaap . That's good to know. It's been a while since I asked this question. Was there any consensus on how the FHIR spec says that FHIR servers should report versions?

view this post on Zulip Grahame Grieve (Mar 17 2020 at 18:45):

server header in http

Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC


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