Resource Operations

Firely Terminal was build with an internal stack, to allow you to combine multiple actions on one or more resources. All resource operations in Firely Terminal are performed on that stack.

We have provided as many as possible atomic operations, so that you can combine them yourself and give you much more flexibility. This way you can get multiple resources in one format from a fhir server and then bundling them before pushing them to a different server.

Using the stack

The resource stack of Firely Terminal is just like a stack in a your computer. You can add stuff to the top, and if you perform operations, they do that with the resource or resources on top of the stack.

You can basically group the types of operations you can do on a stack in three categories:

Adding resouces on the stack

There are several ways to get resources on the stack. You can select a resource from disk:

> fhir push      #Pushes matching files or server resources on the stack

You can get a file from a FHIR server:

> fhir read firely Patient name=Chalmers

It is also possible to duplicate the top resource on the stack:

> fhir duplicate

Removing resources from the stack

You can throw away resources:

> fhir drop

Clear the whole stack:

> fhir clear

Operations to perform with the stack

In a classical (number) stack, you would use +, - or x. With Firely Terminal you get FHIR operations as shown below:

> fhir save      #Saves the file to disk
> fhir filter    #Filters the stack on matching FhirPath expressions
> fhir reverse   #Reverses the order of all resources on the stack
> fhir sort      #Sorts the stack based on the expression
> fhir swap      #Swaps the top 2 elements on the stack
> fhir show      #Displays a resource tree from a file or the top of the stack
> fhir stack     #Lists the items on the stack
> fhir bundle    #Takes all resources on the stack and puts them into a single bundle
> fhir split     #Splits the bundle on the top of the stack into separate resources
> fhir peek      #Displays the top item on the stack

Snapshot Generation

To generate a snapshot for a StructureDefinition, Firely Terminal needs to have two thing in place:

A StructureDefinition has to be on the stack.
The scope needs to be set.

Get a StructureDefinition

A snapshot on the stack. You can do this by fetching a structure definition from a server or from disk;

> fhir read firely StructureDefinition/Patient

Create a scope

You also need a scope for resolving resources and data types. You can create a scope in any directory, by installing the required packages. For example:

> fhir install hl7.fhir.r3.core

Generate the snapshot

After this you can update the snapshot in the StructureDefinition, by one simple statement:

> fhir snapshot

Validation

After this the resource on the stack is replaced with a new StructureDefinition that contains the just generated snapshot.

The validate command validates the resource on the top of the stack, using the current Scope.

Scope

Validation needs a lot of data: from StructureDefinitions on the resource itself, to data types, Extensions and ValueSets. It will look into your project (current folder) and any packages, wether dependencies or depenencies of dependencies (etc.) to find all these assets.

Output

Validation will report any errors and warnings and information messages to the command line output.

> fhir validate

Parameters

You can use your own terminology server or specifiy an additional profile to validate against. For more details on these paremters, see:

> fhir ? validate

XML to JSON and vice versa

With Firely Terminal you can save a FHIR resource either as JSON or XML. This also allows you to convert from one format to the other. Here are some examples.

In order to allow you to perform multiple operations on a resource, Firely Terminal works with an internal stack where you push your resources to. In case of converting to another format, you just have to save those resources from the stack to the preferred format.

With this command you save the resource on the top of the stack as an XML file:

> fhir save --xml

Converting a file to JSON

Load a resource from disk:

> fhir push mypatient.xml

And save it as json:

> fhir save mypatient.json

Firely Terminal will automatically recognize from the target file extension that you want to transform the resource JSON.

Converting a file to XML

Of course the other way around works the same:

> fhir push mylabreport.json
> fhir save mylabreport.xml

Converting all files in a folder:

> fhir push *.xml
> fhir save --all --json

Getting JSON files out a of an XML server:

In the example here, use your own alias and of course a different URL:

> fhir server add myserver https://myxmlfhirserver.com/fhir/
> fhir search myserver Patient _count=20
> fhir save --all --json