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2.26.1.2 Operation $meta on Resource

FHIR Infrastructure Work Group

Maturity Level: 3

Trial Use

Compartments: N/A

This operation retrieves a summary of the profiles, tags, and security labels for the given scope; e.g. for each scope:

• system-wide: a list of all profiles, tags and security labels in use by the system
• resource-type level: A list of all profiles, tags, and security labels for the resource type
• individual resource level: A list of all profiles, tags, and security labels for the current version of the resource. Also, as a special case, this operation (and other meta operations) can be performed on a historical version of a resource)

The official URL for this operation definition is

 http://hl7.org/fhir/OperationDefinition/Resource-meta

Formal Definition (as a OperationDefinition).

URL: [base]/$meta

URL: [base]/[Resource]/$meta

URL: [base]/[Resource]/[id]/$meta

This is an idempotent operation

At the system and type levels, the $meta operation is used to get a summary of all the labels that are in use across the system. The principal use for this operation is to support search e.g. what tags can be searched for. At these levels, the meta will not contain versionId, lastUpdated etc. Systems are not obligated to implement the operation at this level (and should return a 4xx error if they don't). At the resource and historical entry level, the $meta operation returns the same meta as would be returned by accessing the resource directly. This can be used to allow a system to get access to the meta-information for the resource without accessing the resource itself, e.g. for security reasons

2.26.1.2.1 Examples

Get all the tags, profiles, and security labels used on patient resources (Request):

GET /fhir/Patient/$meta

All the tags, profiles, and security labels used on patient resources (Response):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
[other headers]

<Parameters xmlns="http://hl7.org/fhir">
  <parameter>
    <name value="return"/>
    <valueMeta>
      <profile value="http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/daf-patient"/>
      <profile value="http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/uslab-patient"/>
      <security>
        <system value="http://hl7.org/fhir/v3/ActCode"/>
        <code value="EMP"/>
        <display value="employee information sensitivity"/>
      </security>
      <tag>
        <system value="http://example.org/codes/tags"/>
        <code value="current"/>
        <display value="Current Inpatient"/>
      </tag>
    </valueMeta>
  </parameter>
</Parameters>

For more information about operations, including how they are invoked, see Operations.