Generic properties

There is a set of properties that applies to most rules: a name, a status, filters, and error settings.

Name

Every rule has its own name. You can provide your own, but it must be a single word (it may contain hyphens or underscores). If you do not provide a name, one is generated with a generic tally name: rule-1, rule-2, and so on.

- name: acme-publisher
  predicate: StructureDefinition.publisher = 'ACME'

Identifier: the name and the series the rule belongs to together define the rule identifier. In the example above, within the series company the rule is identified as company.acme-publisher. The name is the identifier for a rule, so it is not allowed to have multiple rules with the same name.

Status

The status property provides textual feedback in the user interface and the log while running Quality Control. It tells the reader which rule directive is being executed. A rule always has a default status description, but you can provide your own to be more explicit.

- predicate: id.exists()
  status: "All resources must have an id according to our organization"

Filters

Filters select which files in your project a rule applies to. You can specify more than one filter per rule; only files that fall in all of them are evaluated.

File filters: filter any file based on a globbing pattern, as you know from your own file system. Use a double star ** for any sequence of subdirectories. You can also pass a list of patterns, and exclude a pattern with an exclamation mark (quote it, or YAML will get confused).

- action: validate
  files:
     - /*.json
     - "!package.json"
     - /*.xml

FHIRPath filters: filter resources on a FHIRPath predicate, so only files for which the statement is true remain in your selection. Any statement that resolves to a single value (or an unambiguous true/false) works; a resource type such as Patient is also a valid expression. QC currently supports FHIRPath v2.0.0 (see the FHIRPath standard).

- filter: id.exists()

Category filters: select a group of resources that spans more or less than a single resource type.

profile: all structure definitions that define a resource
extension: all structure definitions that define an extension
conformance: all conformance resources (value sets, code systems, structure definitions, etc.)
example: all resources that are not conformance resources

- status: "Create a snapshot for all extensions"
  action: snapshot
  category: extension

Errors

The error and error-message properties let you customize the issue produced for every match of a rule.

error: set the error code, or a system and code separated with a vertical bar | (for example https://mysystem.org/errors|ERROR1 or just ERROR1).

error-message: define a custom error message. The engine can always generate a message, but a custom one is clearer. For example, predicate: id.exists() produces something like “Predicate failed for rule-3”; adding error-message: This resource does not have an id improves it.

severity: influence the level of an issue. The possible values are info, warning and error. Note that this sets all issues from that rule to the given level, regardless of what they were, so use it with care.

- predicate: id.exists()
  severity: warning