Checking if a FHIR server supports resource versioning

cabolabs · December 20, 2018, 5:41am

On https://www.hl7.org/fhir/http.html section 2.21.0.7 Support for Versions, first sentence “Servers that support this API [versioning] SHOULD provide full version support…” leads to the conclusion that not all servers support versioning.

What is the recommended way to check if a server supports or not versioning?

Is that checking the capabilities for each resource looking for “vread” interactions? Or should check for all the endpoints that accept _history?

Thanks,
Pablo.

lloyd · December 20, 2018, 7:52pm

Look at CapabilityStatement.rest.resource.readHistory

cabolabs · December 31, 2018, 4:09pm

Can you expand a little bit?

You mean on the spec? On the returned metadata from a working server? What should I look for?

Thanks.

lloyd · December 31, 2018, 5:19pm

Read the spec, but at run-time, you’ll be able to find whether history is supported by looking at that path in the CapabilityStatement returned from meta.

blessed_tabvirwa1 · January 8, 2019, 8:14am

As lloyd mentioned looking at the returned capability statement will help you know whether or not the server does support this, for example:

This test server https://fhirtest.uhn.ca does support it as seen by the CapabilityStatement.rest.resource.readHistory flag (see screenshot attached)

cabolabs · January 9, 2019, 11:32pm

Thanks @blessed_tabvirwa1with that example now is clear what @lloyd was referring to. I just needed a little context.