The public facing API documentation for Cerner's implementation of the FHIR® standard.
Create and Update operations typically require JSON bodies which can be tedious to document manually through markdown. To simplify this process and to improve consistency we have added the definition_table
helper to generate a table from a yaml content file.
The definition_table
helper requires 3 parameters: content, action, and version.
content
indicates which content file to load.version
indicates the version of the content file.action
indicates which action specific variations defined in the content file to reflect in the generated table. Typically the action will be :create or :update. The available actions are defined in the content files themselves.
Generating a field table is done by invoking the definition_table
method through an ERB call in whichever documentation file needs the table.
For example, the DSTU2 version of DocumentReference Create can be generated using
<%= definition_table(:document_reference, :create, :dstu2) %>
Whereas the May 2015 version of AllergyIntolerance Update can be generated using
<%= definition_table(:allergy_intolerance, :update, :may2015) %>
In actuality, the version
parameter is reference a subfolder in lib/resources
where the content files for that version are stored. Thus definition_table(:document_reference, :create, :dstu2)
is referencing lib/resources/dstu2/document_reference.yaml
. Adding new versions or new content files is simply a matter of creating an appropriately named folder and content file.
The content is defined in YAML files and most fields are optional. If they are not provided the resulting table cell will just be empty.
- field_name_base_url:
definition_table
will generate nested links for each field prepended with this url - fields: The list of defined fields
- name: The name of the field. This will be generated as a link based of
field_name_base_url
- required: Whether or not the field is required. This is not necessarily whether the field is required by the FHIR® standard, but rather whether it is required by our server implementation.
- cardinality: The is the defined cardinality for the field
- type: The type of the field. If found in
lib/resources/<version>/types.yaml
this field will be linked to the specified resource. - description: The description of the field.
- example: An example of how the field should be populated. The generated examples will be enclosed in <pre> tags to preserve formatting.
- note: Additional implementation notes.
- children: A list of nested fields. Each nested field item has the same structure as this
fields
list. - url: Overrides the
field_name_base_url
generated URL if defined.
- name: The name of the field. This will be generated as a link based of
Standard YAML formatting rules apply
In addition to the fields above, each field can have an action
field which indicates to which action or actions the field applies. When defined, the field will only be included when generating a table with the specified action. Multiple actions are supported as well and can be defined as a list
Make the field apply to a single action
- name: subject
...
action: create
Make the field apply to multiple actions
- name: subject
...
action:
- create
- update
Similarly field values can be flexed per action as well
Alter the required and note values for update and create
- name: id
required:
- update: 'Yes'
- create: 'No'
cardinality: 0..1
type: id
description: The logical id of the resource to update.
example: '{"id": "123412"}'
note:
- update: The id value must match the AllergyIntolerance/<id> value.
- create: The id field <b>must not</b> be set when performing an update operation.
The name of the action isn't limited to create and update, but only one action can be used at a time when generating a field table.
Linking is supported in a few forms
The field names will be automatically linked based on the base_field_name_url
unless overridden by a field's url
value.
The Type table cell will generate links based on URLs key-value pairs defined in lib/resources/<version>/types.yaml
. Any word found in a type
field will be replaced with the specified URL.
The description
and note
fields also support linking via the use of `` and []
tags. Words enclosed in `` tags will be linked according to the types.yaml
file, if possible, or just formatted as <code>
tags if not. Words enclosed in []
will be assumed to be references to other fields in the same table.
In generally it is best to not use `` tags in the type
field, although it is possible. There can be conflicts which may result in duplicate replacements and unintended results.