This page is part of the Canonical Resource Management Infrastructure Implementation Guide (v1.0.0-ballot2: STU1 Ballot 2) based on FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) R4. . For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

Naming Conventions

This section provides guidance on naming conventions for canonical artifacts.

Definitional content

URL

The url element of an artifact SHOULD be constructed according to the following pattern:

{package-canonical-base}/{resource.resourceType}/{resource.name}

Note that this pattern is NOT the same as what is typically produced by the IG publisher, which usually makes use of the id of the artifact in the authoring context. For example, the URL for the CRMIShareableActivityDefinition profile defined in this implementation guide is:

http://hl7.org/fhir/uv/crmi/StructureDefinition/crmi-shareableactivitydefinition

However, because the id element of the artifact will in general change when the artifact is hosted in other environments, the use of the id to construct the URL results in confusion about the role of the id in identifying the artifact. Because the canonical URL is so central to the identity of a canonical resource, this IG recommends the use of the name element to construct the URL, eliminating the potential confusion associated with the use of the id element.

Version

The version element for all artifacts within the same package SHOULD be the same as the version of the package. This is usually the ImplementationGuide in which the artifact is defined.

In addition, all references to canonicals from artifacts in the package to other artifacts in the same package SHOULD be version-consistent (i.e. if the references are version-specific and the referenced artifact is included in the package, the referenced artifact is the version referenced (and no other unreferenced versions of that artifact are included).

Operation definitions

Although FHIR operation definitions can specify a code property, servers may use whatever code they surface in their capability statement to implement operations. To simplify application development and encourage consistency, this implementation guide proposes that:

1. Servers SHOULD use the code property of the OperationDefinition to expose operation capability
2. Operation definitions SHOULD use the same code property as the base definition of an OperationDefinition they are extending