$validate

Introduction

The tool introduced by FHIR to provide a separate validation mechanism for 2-steps commit workflow or for development needs. It works for create, update and delete operations, is called using ?mode= query parameter with values create, update, delete but changes won't be committed. Instead a requester will get an OperationOutcome with information about validation results. See http://hl7.org/fhir/resource-operation-validate.html for the official documentation.

#FHIR format endpoint:
POST /fhir/<resourceType>/$validate
POST /fhir/<resourceType>/<id>/$validate

#Aidbox format endpoint:
POST /<resourceType>/$validate
POST /<resourceType>/<id>/$validate

Such requests check the resource structure, internal business rules and return a list of problems if some exist.

200 OK — those requests always return status 200 Success and failure of a validation request is determined by id of OperationOutcome resource. allok and validationfail are self-descriptive.

$validate supports two ways to pass arguments:

By FHIR spec it receives a Parameters resource as a body:

POST /$validate

resourceType: Parameters
parameter:
- name: mode
  value: {string: <mode>}
- name: profile
  value: {uri: <StructureDefinition.url>}
- name: esource
  resource: <resource>

Parameters are specified in query string; body is the resource to validate:

POST /$validate?mode=<mode>&profile=<StructureDefinition.url>

<resource>

Parameter	Description
resourceType	Required. Type of the resource which needs validation
id	Optional for mode=create. Can either be passed in the resource body or be specified in the route params
resource	Optional for mode=delete, required otherwise. Resource to be validated
mode	Optional. Default is create. Possible values are create, update, delete, patch
profile	Optional. Can be passed multiple times. Used to validate with specific profiles. Value should be StructureDefinition.url of the profile defined as zen schema

mode	Description
create	Ignores errors about attributesid & lastUpdated being required
update	Validates without ignoring errors about attributesid & lastUpdated
delete	Checks if resource with such id exists in Aidbox
patch	Merges the existing resource to the received resource and then validates as update. Patching strategy will be determined as described here
merge-patch	simple deep merge semantics (read more in RFC)
json-patch	advanced JSON transformation (read more in RFC)

Examples

Validation Success

Request contains valid Patient resource inside the body.

# Request:
POST /fhir/Patient/$validate?mode=create

name: [{given: [John]}]

# Response
HTTP 200 OK

id: allok
resourceType: OperationOutcome
issue:
- {severity: informational, code: informational, diagnostics: all ok}

Request contains same valid Patient resource and passed as Parameters.

# Request:
POST /fhir/Patient/$validate

resourceType: Parameters
parameter:
- name: mode
  value: {string: create}
- name: resource
  resource: {name: [{given: [John]}]}

# Response
HTTP 200 OK

id: allok
resourceType: OperationOutcome
issue:
- {severity: informational, code: informational, diagnostics: all ok}

Validation Failure

Patient name must be an array, test is a non-existing field.

# Request:
POST /fhir/Patient/$validate?mode=create

name: "Bob"
test: "foo"

# Response
HTTP 200 OK

id: validationfail
resourceType: OperationOutcome
text: {status: generated, div: Invalid resource}
issue:
- severity: fatal
  code: invalid
  expression: [Patient.name]
  diagnostics: expected array
- severity: fatal
  code: invalid
  expression: [Patient.test]
  diagnostics: extra property

Request contains same invalid Patient resource and passed as Parameters.

# Request:
POST /fhir/Patient/$validate?mode=create

name: "Bob"
test: "foo"

# Response
HTTP 200 OK

resourceType: Parameters
parameter:
- name: mode
  value: {string: create}
- name: resource
  resource: {name: Bob, test: foo}