Create, read, update, and delete

Pathling implements the create, read, update, and delete operations from the FHIR REST API, for managing individual resources within the server.

There are a number of configuration values that affect the encoding of resources, see the Encoding section of the configuration documentation for details.

Create operation

The create operation allows you to create a new resource. The server always generates a new UUID for the resource, ignoring any client-provided ID.

POST /fhir/Patient
Content-Type: application/fhir+json

{
    "resourceType": "Patient",
    "name": [
        {
            "family": "Smith",
            "given": ["John"]
        }
    ],
    "gender": "male",
    "birthDate": "1970-01-01"
}

The response will include:

• HTTP status 201 Created
• A Location header with the URL of the newly created resource
• The created resource with the server-generated ID

{
    "resourceType": "Patient",
    "id": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-7890-abcd-ef1234567890",
    "name": [
        {
            "family": "Smith",
            "given": ["John"]
        }
    ],
    "gender": "male",
    "birthDate": "1970-01-01"
}

Read operation

The read operation retrieves a single resource by its ID.

GET /fhir/Patient/example-patient-1

The response will be:

• HTTP status 200 OK with the resource
• HTTP status 404 Not Found if the resource does not exist

{
    "resourceType": "Patient",
    "id": "example-patient-1",
    "name": [
        {
            "family": "Smith",
            "given": ["John"]
        }
    ],
    "gender": "male",
    "birthDate": "1970-01-01"
}

Update operation

The update operation allows you to create or update a resource with a specific ID. If the resource exists, it will be updated; if not, it will be created with the specified ID.

PUT /fhir/Patient/example-patient-1
Content-Type: application/fhir+json

{
    "resourceType": "Patient",
    "id": "example-patient-1",
    "name": [
        {
            "family": "Smith",
            "given": ["John"]
        }
    ],
    "gender": "male",
    "birthDate": "1970-01-01"
}

Delete operation

The delete operation allows you to remove a resource from the server.

DELETE /fhir/Patient/example-patient-1

The response will be:

• HTTP status 204 No Content if the resource was successfully deleted
• HTTP status 404 Not Found if the resource does not exist

Note that delete operations are not idempotent in Pathling - attempting to delete a resource that has already been deleted will return a 404 error.

Batch operations

To perform multiple create, update, or delete operations in a single request, see the Batch documentation.