This page is part of the FHIR Specification (v5.0.0-ballot: FHIR R5 Ballot Preview). The current version which supercedes this version is 5.0.0. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions . Page versions: R5 R4B R4 R3 R2
FHIR Infrastructure Work Group | Maturity Level: Normative | Standards Status: Normative |
The RESTful API defines a set of common interactions (read, update, search, etc.) performed on a repository of typed resources. These interactions follow the RESTful paradigm of managing state by Create/Read/Update/Delete actions on a set of identified resources. While this approach solves many use cases, there is some functionality that can be met more efficiently using an RPC-like paradigm, where named operations are performed with inputs and outputs (Execute).
Operations are appropriately used where:
This specification describes a lightweight operation framework that seamlessly extends the RESTful API. The framework covers both how to execute such an operation (this page) and how to define an operation.
Operations have the following general properties:
Operations are executed using a URL derived from the FHIR endpoint, where the name of the operation is prefixed by a "dollar sign" ('$') character. For example:
POST http://fhir.someserver.org/fhir/Patient/1/$everything
When an operation has affectsState = false, and the parameters are all primitive datatypes with no extensions (as is the case with the example above), it may be invoked using GET as well. (Note: A HEAD request can also be used - see Support for HEAD).
Operations can be invoked on three types of FHIR endpoints:
The body of the invocation contains a special infrastructure resource called Parameters, which represents a collection of named parameters as <key,value> pairs, where the value may be any primitive or complex datatype or even a full Resource. It may also include strings formatted as search parameter types. A FHIR operation can take a set of zero or more input parameters; in the case where there is zero parameters, the resource may be omitted, and the body will be empty (see below).
Upon completion, the operation returns an HTTP status code indicating what the outcome of
performing the operation, and optionally another Parameters
resource, containing
ne or more output parameters. If there is a single output parameter named 'return' with
a maximum cardinality of 1, with a type corresponding to a resource, then the response
SHALL be the resource that is the return value, with no wrapping Parameters resource. If there is
zero output parameters (possibly because the operation failed), then the resource can be omitted,
and the body will be empty.
Both the body of the POST and the returned result are always a Resource if any body is present, except in the case that the server supports multi-part/form-data (see below).
Operations may be invoked using a GET
, with parameters as HTTP URL parameters, if:
If the response is a Bundle, the Bundle.type will typically be 'collection', though it could be one of the other types. For eample, if the operation has search semantics, such as matching resource counts, and page links (next etc) then the Bundle.type will typically be 'search-set'.
Executing operations without any parameters is a special case. For an operation that doesn't cause any state change, the operation is invoked in a straight forward fashion:
GET [base]/Composition/example/$document
For operations that call state changes, they must be invoked by a POST. There is no parameters resource in this case because a parameters resource cannot be empty. So the operation is invoked with a POST with an empty body:
POST [base]/Claim/example/$submit Content-Length: 0
See the list of defined operations.
Implementations are able to define their own operations in addition to those defined here. Name clashes between operations defined by different implementers can be resolved by the use of the server's Capability Statement.
Also, the definition of these or additional run time operations does not prevent the use of other kinds of operations that are not dependent on and/or not integrated with the RESTful API, provided that their addressing scheme does not clash with the scheme defined here.
Each Operation is defined by:
For each parameter, the following information is needed:
Parameters may be nested into multi-part parameters. Each part has the same information as a parameter, except for use, which is taken from the parameter it is part of.
The resource Operation Definition is used to provide a computable definition of the Operation.
Implementations are able to extend an operation by defining new named parameters. Implementations can publish their own extended definitions using the Operation Definition resource, and this variant definition can use OperationDefinition.base to refer to the underlying definition.
Note that the FHIR specification will never define any parameter names starting with "x-".
Operations are typically executed synchronously: a client sends a request to a server that includes the operation's in parameters and the server replies with the operation's out parameters.
The URL for an operation end-point depends on its context:
An operation is generally invoked by performing an HTTP POST to the operation's end-point. The submitted content is the special Parameters format (the "in" parameters) - a list of named parameters. For an example, see the value set expansion request example. Note that when parameters have a search type, the search modifiers are available and are used on the parameter name in the Parameters resource (e.g. "code:in").
Note that the same arrangement as for the RESTful interface applies with respect to content types.
If all the parameters for the operation are primitive types and the operation
has affectsState
= false,
the operation may be invoked by performing an HTTP GET operation where all of the values of the parameters are appended
to the URL in the search portion of the URL (e.g. after the '?' character). Servers SHALL support this method of invocation.
E.g.
GET [base]/ValueSet/$expand?url=http://hl7.org/fhir/ValueSet/body-site&filter=abdo
When using the HTTP GET operation, if there is a repeating parameter for the extended operation the values for that parameter are repeated by repeating the named parameter. E.g. Observation $stats statistic parameter
GET [base]/Observation/$stats?subject=Patient/123&code=55284-4&system=http://loinc.org&duration=1&statistic=average&statistic=min&statistic=max&statistic=count
If an operation has exactly one input parameter whose type is a FHIR Resource and all other parameters a client intends to submit are simple parameters, then the client MAY invoke the operation via POST with the input resource as the request body and additional parameters as query parameters. Servers SHALL support this means of invocation of the operation.
Servers MAY choose to support submission of the parameters represented in multi-part/form-data format as well, which can be useful when testing an operation using HTML forms.
If an operation succeeds, an HTTP Status success code is returned. Servers SHALL return the appropriate status code. This will usually be a 2xx code, though it may also be a 303 See Other. Other kinds of 3xx codes should be understood to indicate that the operation did not proceed, and the client will need to re-issue the operation if it can perform the redirection (e.g. may get redirected to an authentication step). User agents should note that servers may issue redirects, etc. to authenticate the client in response to an operation request. An HTTP status code of 4xx or 5xx indicates an error, and an OperationOutcome SHOULD be returned with details.
In general, an operation response uses the same Parameters format whether there is only one or there are multiple named out parameters.
If there is only one out parameter, which is a single Resource with the parameter name "return" then the parameter format is not used, and the response is simply the resource itself.
The result of an operation is subject to content negotiation like any other interaction. Specifically, if the returned resource is a Binary, the response SHALL behave in the same manner as if a 'read' operation had been performed on the resource. I.e. The content will be returned as either a FHIR resourse with base64-encoded content or as a raw binary, depending on the Accept header specified when invoking the operation (see Serving Binary Resources using the RESTful API ).
The resources that are returned by the operation may be
retained and made available in the resource repository
on the operation server. In that case, the server will
provide the identity of the resource in the returned resources. When
resources that are not persisted are returned in the response,
they will have no id
property.
Use the standard RESTful API Asynchronous pattern to execute operations asynchronously.