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Custom Resources
All examples from this tutorial you can run in Postman. Here's the web view of these examples in Postman.
Sometimes your data does not fit any existing FHIR resources. It is not always obvious that your data cannot be translated to FHIR because of some FHIR generalizations. The right first step is to go to FHIR comunity chat and ask your specific question about mapping to FHIR, or contact Health Samurai modeling team about your concern. If you are still sure that there is no appropriate resource in FHIR or it takes too much time to wait for it, you can define your own Custom Resources in Aidbox.
Custom Resources are defined exactly the same way as core FHIR resources. They can refer to existing resources, have uniform REST API for CRUD and Search, and participate in transactions.
Let's imagine that in our application we want to store user preferences such as UI configuration or personalized Patient List filters. It is expected that you have already created a box in Aidbox.Cloud. First of all, we have to define a new resource type by creating an Entity resource.
Access the REST console and paste the following request. You should see the response:
Request
Response
POST /Entity
id: UserSetting
type: resource
isOpen: true
resourceType: Entity
id: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:19:51.672Z'
versionId: '2'
type: resource
isOpen: true
This means that the resource of the type
Entity was successfully created. When you create Entity resources with type resource, Aidbox will on the fly initialize a storage for new resource type and generate CRUD & Search REST API.When you set the
isOpen: true flag, this means that the resource does not have any specific structure and that you can store arbitrary data. This is useful when you do not know the exact resource structure, for example, while working on a prototype. Later we will make its schema more strict and will constraint it with additional validations.Let's check API for our custom resource
UserSetting. You can list UserSetting resources by the standard FHIR URI template GET /{resourceType} :Request
Response
GET /UserSetting
resourceType: Bundle
type: searchset
params: []
query-sql: ['SELECT "usersetting".* FROM "usersetting" LIMIT ? OFFSET ?', 100, 0]
query-time: 2
entry: []
total: _undefined
link: []
In the
query-sql we see what query is executed by Aidbox to get these resources and can see that the table usersetting was created. You can test it with the DB Console using the following query:SELECT * FROM "usersetting";
Cool! Now, let's create first
UserSetting resource using the REST Console:Request
Response
POST /UserSetting
id: user-1
theme: dark
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:33:21.225Z'
versionId: '3'
id: user-1
theme: dark
Try to get all user settings now:
Request
Response
GET /UserSetting
resourceType: Bundle
type: searchset
params: []
query-sql: ['SELECT "usersetting".* FROM "usersetting" LIMIT ? OFFSET ?', 100, 0]
query-time: 15
entry:
- resource:
theme: dark
id: user-1
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:33:21.225Z'
versionId: '3'
total: 1
link: []
Or execute the SQL query in the Aidbox.Cloud DB Console:
SELECT id, resource->>'theme' as theme FROM "usersetting";
id | theme |
user-1 | dark |
Also you can read, update, and delete
UserSetting resource with:READ Request
READ Response
GET /UserSetting/user-1
id: user-1
theme: white
UPDATE Request
UPDATE Response
PUT /UserSetting/user-1
theme: white
patientsFilters:
- location: ICU
resourceType: UserSetting
id: user-1
theme: white
patientsFilters:
- {location: ICU}
READ HISTORY Request
READ HISTORY Response
GET /UserSetting/user-1/_history
resourceType: Bundle
type: history
total: 2
entry:
- resource:
theme: white
patientsFilters:
- {location: ICU}
id: user-1
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:39:41.030Z'
versionId: '4'
request: {method: PUT, url: UserSetting}
- resource:
theme: dark
id: user-1
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:33:21.225Z'
versionId: '3'
request: {method: POST, url: UserSetting}
DELETE Request
DELETE Response
READ HISTORY Request
READ HISTORY Response
DELETE /UserSetting/user-1
Status 204
# And again watch history:
GET /UserSetting/user-1/_history
resourceType: Bundle
type: history
total: 3
entry:
- resource:
theme: white
patientsFilters:
- {location: ICU}
id: user-1
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:42:58.482Z'
versionId: '5'
request: {method: DELETE, url: UserSetting}
- resource:
theme: white
patientsFilters:
- {location: ICU}
id: user-1
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:39:41.030Z'
versionId: '4'
request: {method: PUT, url: UserSetting}
- resource:
theme: dark
id: user-1
resourceType: UserSetting
meta:
lastUpdated: '2018-10-16T12:33:21.225Z'
versionId: '3'
request: {method: POST, url: UserSetting}
Awesome! We've got a nice API by providing a couple of lines of metadata. But the schema of our custom resource is currently too open and users can put any data into
UserSetting resource. For example, we can do this:Request
Response
POST /UserSetting
id: user-2
theme:
- name: white
- name: black
resourceType: UserSetting
id: user-2
theme:
- name: white
- name: black
Now, let's put some restrictions and define our Custom Resource structure. To describe structure of a resource, we will use Attribute meta-resource. For example, we want to restrict the
theme attribute to be a string value from the specific enumeration:Request
Response
POST /Attribute
id: UserSetting.theme
path: ['theme']
type: {id: string, resourceType: Entity}
enum: ['dark', 'white']
resource: {id: UserSetting, resourceType: Entity}
resource:
id: UserSetting
resourceType: Entity
id: UserSetting.theme
resourceType: Attribute
path:
- theme
type:
id: string
resourceType: Entity
enum:
- dark
- white
To validate incoming resources, Aidbox uses json-schema which is generated from Entity & Attribute meta-resources (read more in Validation Section). Using $json-schema operation we can inspect which schema will be applied to
UserSetting resources:Request
Response
GET /$json-schema?path=definitions.UserSetting
path: [definitions, UserSetting]
schema:
type: object
minProperties: 1
patternProperties:
^(_.*|fhir_.*): {}
properties:
id: {type: string}
extension:
type: array
items: {$ref: '#/definitions/Extension'}
modifierExtension:
type: array
items: {$ref: '#/definitions/Extension'}
meta: {$ref: '#/definitions/Meta'}
resourceType: {type: string, constant: UserSetting}
theme:
type: string
enum: [dark, white]
As we see on the line 17 in the response above, the
theme property has now type string and is restricted by the enumeration [dark, white]. Let's try to create an invalid resource now:
Request
Response
Request 2
Response 2
POST /UserSetting
id: user-3
theme: 2
# Response status: 422 Unprocessable Entity
resourceType: OperationOutcome
errors:
- path: [theme]
message: expected type of string
- path: [theme]
message: expeceted one of dark, white
warnings: []
PUT /UserSetting
id: user-4
theme: unexisting
# Response status: 422 Unprocessable Entity
resourceType: OperationOutcome
errors:
- path: [theme]
message: expected one of dark, white
warnings: []
We constrained only one attribute and because our
Entity.isOpen = true, this resource can have any additional attributes without a schema. We can turn this off by setting Entity.isOpen to false:Request
Response
PATCH /Entity/UserSetting?_type=json-merge-patch
isOpen: false
resourceType: Entity
type: resource
id: UserSetting
isOpen: false
Now, let's inspect the schema:
Request
Response
GET /$json-schema?path=definitions.UserSetting
path: [definitions, UserSetting]
schema:
type: object
minProperties: 1
patternProperties:
^(_.*|fhir_.*): {}
properties:
id: {type: string}
extension:
type: array
items: {$ref: '#/definitions/Extension'}
modifierExtension:
type: array
items: {$ref: '#/definitions/Extension'}
meta: {$ref: '#/definitions/Meta'}
resourceType: {type: string, constant: UserSetting}
theme:
type: string
enum: [dark, white]
additionalProperties: false
And we see the schema keyword
additionalProperties: false (line 20 in the response above) which means that now our schema is closed. Let's test it by the request with additional property menu:Request
Response
POST /UserSetting
theme: dark
menu: collapsed
# Response status: 422 Unprocessable Entity
resourceType: OperationOutcome
errors:
- path: [menu]
message: extra property
warnings: []
In this tutorial you learned how to define and use Custom Resources in Aidbox. In future series we will show you how to add more advanced validations on Custom Resources and create custom endpoints to define your business logic. If you have any questions or suggestions, please provide us with your feedback!
Last modified 1yr ago