README

Pre-generated PHP classes for HL7 FHIR resources, produced by dcarbone/php-fhir.

This library provides strongly-typed PHP models for every FHIR resource, element, and primitive across multiple FHIR versions — complete with JSON/XML serialization, field validation, and a built-in REST client.

Features

• All major FHIR versions — DSTU1, DSTU2, STU3, R4, R4B, and R5
• Strongly-typed models — every resource, element, and primitive as a PHP class with full constructor support
• JSON & XML serialization — encode/decode resources using native PHP extensions
• Built-in FHIR REST client — read, create, update, patch, and delete resources via cURL
• Automatic resource parsing — detect and unserialize arbitrary FHIR responses by resourceType or XML element name
• Schema-driven validation — built-in rules derived from the FHIR schema, with support for custom rules
• PHP 8.1+ named arguments — clean, readable type construction without positional null padding

Supported FHIR Versions

Requirements

• PHP 8.1 or newer
• Extensions: curl, dom, json, libxml, simplexml, xmlreader, xmlwriter

Installation

Via Composer (recommended)

composer require dcarbone/php-fhir-generated

Standalone

Clone or download this repository and require the built-in autoloader:

require __DIR__ . '/src/DCarbone/PHPFHIRGenerated/Autoloader.php';

Quick Start

Constructing a Resource

<?php

use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Versions\R4\Types\FHIRElement\FHIRHumanName;
use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Versions\R4\Types\FHIRResource\FHIRDomainResource\FHIRPatient;

$patient = new FHIRPatient(
    id: 'patient-1',
    language: 'en-us',
    name: [
        new FHIRHumanName(given: ['Real'], family: 'Human'),
    ],
);

Serializing to JSON

echo json_encode($patient, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

Unserializing from JSON

$patient = FHIRPatient::jsonUnserialize('{"resourceType":"Patient","id":"patient-1"}');

Fetching from a FHIR Server

<?php

use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Client\Client;
use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Client\Config;
use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Encoding\SerializeFormatEnum;
use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Versions\R4\Version;
use DCarbone\PHPFHIRGenerated\Versions\R4\VersionClient;

$config = new Config(
    address: 'https://hapi.fhir.org/baseR4',
    defaultFormat: SerializeFormatEnum::JSON,
);

$client = new VersionClient(new Client($config), new Version());
$patient = $client->readOnePatient(resourceID: 'example');

Validating a Resource

$errors = $patient->_getValidationErrors();

if ([] === $errors) {
    echo "Resource is valid!\n";
} else {
    foreach ($errors as $path => $fieldErrors) {
        foreach ($fieldErrors as $rule => $message) {
            echo "{$path}: {$message}\n";
        }
    }
}

Documentation

Full documentation is available on the Wiki:

• Configuration — Version, serialization, and unserialization options
• Constructing Types — Creating resource, element, and primitive instances
• Serialization — Encoding and decoding resources in JSON and XML
• FHIR Client — Built-in HTTP client for FHIR REST operations
• Resource Parsing — Automatically parsing arbitrary FHIR responses
• Validation — Built-in and custom validation rules
• Type System — Type hierarchy and interfaces
• Autoloading — Class loading with and without Composer
• Migrating from v2 — Breaking changes and upgrade guide from the previous major version

Related Projects

License

Apache-2.0