This vignette covers all topics concerned with flattening FHIR resources in some depth. If you are interested in a quick overview, please have a look at the fhircrackr:intro vignette.
Before running any of the following code, you need to load the fhircrackr package:
library(fhircrackr)In the vignette fhircrackr: Download FHIR resources you saw how to download FHIR resources into R. Now we’ll have a look at how to flatten them into data.frames/data.tables. For the rest of the vignette, we’ll work with the two example data sets from fhircrackr, which can be made accessible like this:
pat_bundles <- fhir_unserialize(bundles = patient_bundles)
med_bundles <- fhir_unserialize(bundles = medication_bundles)See ?patient_bundles and ?medication_bundles for the FHIR search requests that generated them.
There are two extraction scenarios when you want to flatten FHIR bundles: Either you want to extract just one resource type, or you want to extract several resource types. Because the structure of different resource types is quite dissimilar, it makes sense to create one table per resource type. Therefore the result of the flattening process in fhircrackr can be either a single table (when extracting just one resource type) or a list of tables (when extracting more than one resource type). Both scenarios are realized with a call to fhir_crack(). We will now explain the two scenarios individually.
We’ll start with pat_bundles, which only contains Patient resources. To transform them into a table, we will use fhir_crack(). The most important argument fhir_crack() takes is bundles, an object of class fhir_bundle_list that is returned by fhir_search(). The second important argument is design, which tells the function which data to extract from the bundle. When we want to extract just one resource type, we can use a fhir_table_description in the argument design. fhir_crack() then returns a single data.frame or data.table (if argument data.table = TRUE).
We’ll show you an example of how it works first and then go on to explain the fhir_table_description in more detail.
pat_table_description <- fhir_table_description(
resource = "Patient",
cols = list(
id = "id",
gender = "gender",
name = "name/family",
city = "address/city"
)
)
table <- fhir_crack(
bundles = pat_bundles,
design = pat_table_description,
verbose = 0
)
head(table)
# id gender name city
# 1 2072744 female Nordmann <NA>
# 2 2431578 male Smith <NA>
# 3 2431568 male Chalmers:::Windsor PleasantVille
# 4 2431577 male Malekar <NA>
# 5 2431757 male murali <NA>
# 6 2431759 male XYZ PhoenixA fhir_table_description holds all the information fhir_crack() needs to create a table from resources of a certain type. It is created with fhir_table_description() by providing the following arguments:
resource argumentThis is basically a string that defines the resource type (e.g. Patient or Observation) to extract. It is the only argument that you must provide and you set it like this:
fhir_table_description(resource = "Patient")
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# An empty fhir_columns object
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEInternally, fhir_table_description() calls fhir_resource_type() which checks the type you provided against list of all currently available resource types which can be found at https://hl7.org/FHIR/resourcelist.html. Case errors are corrected automatically and the function throws a warning if the resource type doesn’t match the list under hl7.org.
As you can see in the above output, there are more elements in a fhir_table_description which are filled automatically by fhir_table_description().
The cols argument takes the column names and XPath (1.0) expressions defining the columns to create from the FHIR resources. The XPath expression has to be built relatively to the root of the resource tree. If the cols element is empty, fhir_crack() will extract all available elements of the resource and name the columns automatically. To explicitly define columns, you can provide a (named) character or a (named) list with XPath expressions like this:
fhir_table_description(
resource = "Patient",
cols = list(
gender = "gender",
name = "name/family",
city = "address/city"
)
)
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# ------------ -----------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------
# gender | gender
# name | name/family
# city | address/city
# ------------ -----------------
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEIn this case a table with three columns called gender, name and city will be created. They will be filled with the element that can be found under the respective xpath expression in the resource. The element will be extracted regardless of the attribute that is used (in FHIR this is mostly @value but can also be @id or @url in rare cases). If you are interested in keeping the attribute information, you can set keep_attr = TRUE, in which case the attribute will be attached to the column name.
Internally, fhir_table_description() calls fhir_columns() to check the validity of the XPath expressions and assign column names. You can provide the XPath expressions in a named or unnamed character vector or a named or unnamed list. If you choose the unnamed version, the names will be set automatically and reflect the respective XPath expression:
#custom column names
fhir_columns(
xpaths = c(
gender = "gender",
name = "name/family",
city = "address/city"
)
)
# ------------ -----------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------
# gender | gender
# name | name/family
# city | address/city
# ------------ -----------------
#automatic column names
fhir_columns(xpaths = c("gender", "name/family", "address/city"))
# ------------- -----------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------- -----------------
# gender | gender
# name.family | name/family
# address.city | address/city
# ------------- -----------------A fhir_columns object that is created explicitly like this can of course also be used in the columns argument of fhir_table_description. We strongly advise to only use fully specified relative XPath expressions here, e.g. "ingredient/strength/numerator/code" and not search paths like "//code", as those can generate unexpected results especially if the searched element appears on different levels of the resource.
While the resource and cols control what is extracted from the bundles, the remaining elements of a fhir_table_description control how the resulting table looks. These elements for example control how fhir_crack() deals with multiple entries for the same element and with columns that are completely empty, i.e. have only NA values. Furthermore you can select the shape of the output tables and how column names are generated:
sep element is a string defining the separator used when multiple entries to the same attribute are pasted together. This could for example happen if there is more than one address entry in a Patient resource. Examples of this are shown further down under the heading Multiple entries.brackets element is either an empty character vector (of length 0) or a character vector of length 2. If it is empty, multiple entries will be pasted together without indices. If it is of length 2, the two strings provided here are used as brackets for automatically generated indices to sort out multiple entries (see paragraph Multiple Entries). brackets = c("[", "]") e.g. will lead to indices like [1.1].rm_empty_cols flag can be TRUE or FALSE. If TRUE, columns containing only NA values will be removed, if FALSE, these columns will be kept.format element takes values compact or wide that specify the shape of the output table. In a compact table multiple entries are written into the same cell/column separated by sep. In a wide table multiple entries are spread over several indexed columns. See the paragraph on multiple entries for more information.keep_attr flag controls whether the xml tag attributes of the FHIR element should be attached to the end of the column name or not. For the column extracted by name/given, the name would result in name.given if keep_attr = FALSE and name.given@value if keep_attr = TRUE.All five style elements can also be controlled directly by the fhir_crack() arguments sep, brackets, remove_empty_columns, format and keep_attr. If the function arguments are NULL (their default), the values provided in fhir_table_description are used, if they are not NULL, they will overwrite any values in fhir_table_description.
A fully defined set of a Patient table description would be like this:
table_description <- fhir_table_description(
resource = "Patient",
cols = list(
gender = "gender",
name = "name/family",
city = "address/city"
),
sep = "||",
brackets = c("[", "]"),
rm_empty_cols = FALSE,
format = "compact",
keep_attr = FALSE
)We will now work through examples using fhir_table_descriptions of different complexity.
Lets start with an example where we only provide the (mandatory) resource component of the table_description. In this case, fhir_crack() will extract all available attributes and use default values for the other elements:
#define a table_description
table_description1 <- fhir_table_description(resource = "Patient")
#convert resources
#pass table_description1 to the design argument
table <- fhir_crack(bundles = pat_bundles, design = table_description1, verbose = 0)
#have look at part of the results
table[1:5,1:5]#38:42
# active address.city address.district address.line address.period.start
# 1 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 3 true PleasantVille Rainbow 534 Erewhon St 1974-12-25
# 4 true <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 5 true <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
#see the fill result with:
#View(table)As you can see, this can easily become a rather wide and sparse data frame. This is due to the fact that every every element appearing in at least one of the resources will be turned into a variable (i.e. column), even if none of the other resources contain this element. For those resources, the value on that element will be set to NA. Depending on the variability of the resources, the resulting table can contain a lot of NA values. If a resource has multiple entries for an element (e.g. several addresses in a Patient resource), these entries will pasted together using the string provided in sep as a separator. The column names in this option are automatically generated by pasting together the path to the respective element, e.g. name.given.
If we know which elements we want to extract, we can specify them in a named list and provide it in the cols component of the table description:
#define a table_description
table_description2 <- fhir_table_description(
resource = "Patient",
cols = list(
PID = "id",
use_name = "name/use",
given_name = "name/given",
family_name = "name/family",
gender = "gender",
birthday = "birthDate"
)
)
#convert resources
table <- fhir_crack(bundles = pat_bundles, design = table_description2, verbose = 0)
#have look at the results
head(table)
# PID use_name given_name
# 1 2072744 official K:::Kari
# 2 2431578 official Roman
# 3 2431568 official:::usual:::maiden Peter:::James:::Jim:::Peter:::James
# 4 2431577 official Ganpat:::Malekar
# 5 2431757 old <NA>
# 6 2431759 official ABC
# family_name gender birthday
# 1 Nordmann female 2018-09-12
# 2 Smith male 2021-07-19
# 3 Chalmers:::Windsor male 1974-12-25
# 4 Malekar male 1996-02-07
# 5 murali male <NA>
# 6 XYZ male 1998-01-03This option will return more tidy and clear data frames, because you have full control over the extracted columns including their name in the resulting table. You should always extract the resource id, because this is used to link to other resources you might also extract.
If you are not sure which elements are available or where they are located in the resource, it can be helpful to start by extracting all available elements. If you are more comfortable with xml, you can also use xml2::xml_structure on one of the bundles from your bundle list, this will print the complete xml structure into your console. Then you can get an overview over the available element and their location and continue by doing a second, more targeted extraction to get your final table.
If you want to have a look at how the design looked that was actually used in the last call to fhir_crack() you can retrieve it with fhir_canonical_design().
fhir_canonical_design()
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# ------------ -----------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------
# PID | id
# use_name | name/use
# given_name | name/given
# family_name | name/family
# gender | gender
# birthday | birthDate
# ------------ -----------------
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEOf course the previous example is using just one resource type. If you are interested in several types of resources, you need one fhir_table_description per resource type. You can bundle a bunch of fhir_table_descriptions in a fhir_design. This is basically a named list of fhir_table_descriptions, and when you pass it to fhir_crack(), the result will be a named list of tables with the same names as the design. Consider an example where we have downloaded MedicationStatements referring to a certain medication as well as the Patient resources these MedicationStatements are linked to.
The design to extract both resource types could look like this:
meds <- fhir_table_description(
resource = "MedicationStatement",
cols = list(
ms_id = "id",
status_text = "text/status",
status = "status",
med_system = "medicationCodeableConcept/coding/system",
med_code = "medicationCodeableConcept/coding/code",
med_display = "medicationCodeableConcept/coding/display",
dosage = "dosage/text",
patient = "subject/reference",
last_update = "meta/lastUpdated"
),
sep = "|",
brackets = NULL,
rm_empty_cols = FALSE,
format = 'compact',
keep_attr = FALSE
)
pat <- fhir_table_description(resource = "Patient")
design <- fhir_design(meds, pat)In this example, we have spelled out the table_description MedicationStatement completely, while we have used a short form for Patients. It looks like this:
design
# A fhir_design with 2 table descriptions:
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: MedicationStatement
#
# cols:
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# ms_id | id
# status_text | text/status
# status | status
# med_system | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/system
# med_code | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/code
# med_display | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/display
# dosage | dosage/text
# patient | subject/reference
# last_update | meta/lastUpdated
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
#
# sep: '|'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSE
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# An empty fhir_columns object
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEAs you can see, each table_description is identified by a name, which will also be the name of the corresponding table in the result of fhir_crack().
You can assign the names explicitly, if you prefer:
design <- fhir_design(Medications = meds, Patients = pat)
design
# A fhir_design with 2 table descriptions:
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: MedicationStatement
#
# cols:
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# ms_id | id
# status_text | text/status
# status | status
# med_system | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/system
# med_code | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/code
# med_display | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/display
# dosage | dosage/text
# patient | subject/reference
# last_update | meta/lastUpdated
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
#
# sep: '|'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSE
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# An empty fhir_columns object
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEAnd you can also extract single table_descriptions by their name:
design$Patients
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# An empty fhir_columns object
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEWe can use the design for fhir_crack():
list_of_tables <- fhir_crack(bundles = med_bundles, design = design, verbose = 0)
head(list_of_tables$Medications)
# ms_id status_text status med_system med_code med_display
# 1 30233 generated active http://snomed.info/ct 429374003 simvastatin 40mg
# 2 42091 generated active http://snomed.info/ct 429374003 simvastatin 40mg
# 3 45724 generated active http://snomed.info/ct 429374003 simvastatin 40mg
# 4 59597 generated active http://snomed.info/ct 429374003 simvastatin 40mg
# 5 69117 generated active http://snomed.info/ct 429374003 simvastatin 40mg
# 6 591941 generated active http://snomed.info/ct 429374003 simvastatin 40mg
# dosage patient last_update
# 1 1 tab once daily Patient/30163 2019-09-26T14:34:44.543+00:00
# 2 1 tab once daily Patient/42024 2019-10-09T22:44:05.728+00:00
# 3 1 tab once daily Patient/45657 2019-10-11T16:30:24.411+00:00
# 4 1 tab once daily Patient/59530 2019-11-12T14:27:00.098+00:00
# 5 1 tab once daily Patient/69050 2019-11-16T16:51:50.759+00:00
# 6 1 tab once daily Patient/591874 2020-01-22T12:53:40.539+00:00
head(list_of_tables$Patients)
# address.city address.country address.district
# 1 <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 6 Westford US <NA>
# address.extension
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/geolocation
# address.extension.extension address.extension.extension.valueDecimal
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 latitude:::longitude 42.58942256332994:::-71.3827654850569
# address.line address.postalCode address.state address.text address.type
# 1 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA>
# 6 378 Krajcik Lodge <NA> Massachusetts <NA> <NA>
# address.use birthDate communication.language.coding.code
# 1 <NA> 2020-03-23 <NA>
# 2 <NA> 2020-03-24 <NA>
# 3 <NA> 1979-10-08 <NA>
# 4 <NA> 2019-11-10 <NA>
# 5 <NA> 1970-01-10 <NA>
# 6 <NA> 1946-03-29 en-US
# communication.language.coding.display communication.language.coding.system
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 English urn:ietf:bcp:47
# communication.language.text
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 English
# extension
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/StructureDefinition/us-core-race:::http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/StructureDefinition/us-core-ethnicity:::http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/patient-mothersMaidenName:::http://hl7.org/fhir/us/core/StructureDefinition/us-core-birthsex:::http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/patient-birthPlace:::http://synthetichealth.github.io/synthea/disability-adjusted-life-years:::http://synthetichealth.github.io/synthea/quality-adjusted-life-years
# extension.extension extension.extension.valueCoding.code
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 ombCategory:::text:::ombCategory:::text 2106-3:::2186-5
# extension.extension.valueCoding.display
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 White:::Not Hispanic or Latino
# extension.extension.valueCoding.system
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 urn:oid:2.16.840.1.113883.6.238:::urn:oid:2.16.840.1.113883.6.238
# extension.extension.valueString extension.valueAddress.city
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 White:::Not Hispanic or Latino Boston
# extension.valueAddress.country extension.valueAddress.state
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 US Massachusetts
# extension.valueCode extension.valueDecimal
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 M 4.160702818392717:::67.83929718160728
# extension.valueString gender generalPractitioner.reference id
# 1 <NA> male <NA> 697738
# 2 <NA> male <NA> 697934
# 3 <NA> female <NA> 42024
# 4 <NA> female <NA> 59530
# 5 <NA> male <NA> 1162779
# 6 Kristyn560 Lesch175 male Practitioner/636228 636226
# identifier.system
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 http://www.interopx.com:::http://hospital.smarthealthit.org:::http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/us-ssn:::urn:oid:2.16.840.1.113883.4.3.25:::http://standardhealthrecord.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/passportNumber
# identifier.type.coding.code
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 MR:::SS:::DL:::PPN
# identifier.type.coding.display
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 Medical Record Number:::Social Security Number:::Driver's License:::Passport Number
# identifier.type.coding.system
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0203:::http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0203:::http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0203:::http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v2-0203
# identifier.type.text
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 Medical Record Number:::Social Security Number:::Driver's License:::Passport Number
# identifier.value
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 411669:::41166989-975d-4d17-b9de-17f94cb3eec1:::999-17-8717:::S99933732:::X75257608X
# managingOrganization.reference maritalStatus.coding.code
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 Organization/636227 M
# maritalStatus.coding.display
# 1 <NA>
# 2 <NA>
# 3 <NA>
# 4 <NA>
# 5 <NA>
# 6 M
# maritalStatus.coding.system maritalStatus.text
# 1 <NA> <NA>
# 2 <NA> <NA>
# 3 <NA> <NA>
# 4 <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> <NA>
# 6 http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/v3-MaritalStatus M
# meta.lastUpdated meta.source meta.versionId
# 1 2020-03-23T16:12:33.294+00:00 #LUrUNxAhdZrFHftu 1
# 2 2020-03-24T06:19:22.991+00:00 #F6KTacg6zpZSnNLM 1
# 3 2020-08-07T14:25:55.860+00:00 #S9uv5jD2iAAi5WFP 3
# 4 2021-07-13T08:44:06.580+00:00 #qWzI8wftDtgcB3LC 6
# 5 2021-10-15T09:10:37.409+00:00 #JnxgDwhILtrVk2uc 5
# 6 2020-03-04T07:48:04.171+00:00 #zQK1HhDgSQFBnN3C 1
# multipleBirthBoolean name.family name.given name.prefix name.text
# 1 <NA> Cooper Xavier <NA> Xavier Cooper
# 2 <NA> Hay Harry <NA> Harry Hay
# 3 <NA> Walker Pippa <NA> Pippa Walker
# 4 <NA> Singh2 Anna <NA> <NA>
# 5 <NA> Doe John <NA> John Doe
# 6 false Stiedemann542 Aaron697 Mr. <NA>
# name.use telecom.system telecom.use telecom.value text.status
# 1 official <NA> <NA> <NA> generated
# 2 official <NA> <NA> <NA> generated
# 3 official <NA> <NA> <NA> generated
# 4 <NA> <NA> <NA> <NA> generated
# 5 official <NA> <NA> <NA> generated
# 6 official phone home 555-213-2064 generatedAs you can see, the result is a list of tables, one for Patient resources and one for MedicationStatement resources. When you use fhir_crack() with a fhir_desgn() instead of a fhir_table_description, the result is an object of class fhir_df_list or fhir_dt_list that also has the design attached. You can extract the design from a list like this using fhir_design():
fhir_design(list_of_tables)
# A fhir_design with 2 table descriptions:
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: MedicationStatement
#
# cols:
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# ms_id | id
# status_text | text/status
# status | status
# med_system | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/system
# med_code | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/code
# med_display | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/display
# dosage | dosage/text
# patient | subject/reference
# last_update | meta/lastUpdated
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
#
# sep: '|'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSE
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# An empty fhir_columns object
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSENote that this doesn’t work on single tables created with a fhir_table_description.
If you want to save a design for later or to share with others, you can do so using the fhir_save_design(). This function takes a design and saves it as an xml file:
temp_dir <- tempdir()
fhir_save_design(design = design, file = paste0(temp_dir, "/design.xml"))To read the design back into R, you can use fhir_load_design():
fhir_load_design(paste0(temp_dir, "/design.xml"))
# A fhir_design with 2 table descriptions:
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: MedicationStatement
#
# cols:
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# column name | xpath expression
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
# ms_id | id
# status_text | text/status
# status | status
# med_system | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/system
# med_code | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/code
# med_display | medicationCodeableConcept/coding/display
# dosage | dosage/text
# patient | subject/reference
# last_update | meta/lastUpdated
# ------------ -----------------------------------------
#
# sep: '|'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSE
# A fhir_table_description with the following elements:
#
# resource: Patient
#
# cols:
# An empty fhir_columns object
#
# sep: ':::'
# brackets: no brackets
# rm_empty_cols: FALSE
# format: 'compact'
# keep_attr: FALSEA particularly complicated problem in flattening FHIR resources is caused by the fact that there can be multiple entries to an element. The profile according to which your FHIR resources have been built defines how often a particular element can appear in a resource. This is called the cardinality of the element. For example the Patient resource defined here can have zero or one birth dates but arbitrarily many addresses. In the default setting, fhir_crack() will paste multiple entries for the same element together in the table, using the separator provided by the sep argument. In most cases this will work just fine, but there are some special cases that require a little more attention.
Let’s have a look at an example bundle containing just three Patient resources. You can make it available in your workspace like this:
bundle <- fhir_unserialize(example_bundles2)This is how the xml looks:
<Bundle>
<type value='searchset'/>
<entry>
<resource>
<Patient>
<id value='id1'/>
<address>
<use value='home'/>
<city value='Amsterdam'/>
<type value='physical'/>
<country value='Netherlands'/>
</address>
<name>
<given value='Marie'/>
</name>
</Patient>
</resource>
</entry>
<entry>
<resource>
<Patient>
<id value='id2'/>
<address>
<use value='home'/>
<city value='Rome'/>
<type value='physical'/>
<country value='Italy'/>
</address>
<address>
<use value='work'/>
<city value='Stockholm'/>
<type value='postal'/>
<country value='Sweden'/>
</address>
<name>
<given value='Susie'/>
</name>
</Patient>
</resource>
</entry>
<entry>
<resource>
<Patient>
<id value='id3'/>
<address>
<use value='home'/>
<city value='Berlin'/>
</address>
<address>
<type value='postal'/>
<country value='France'/>
</address>
<address>
<use value='work'/>
<city value='London'/>
<type value='postal'/>
<country value='England'/>
</address>
<name>
<given value='Frank'/>
</name>
<name>
<given value='Max'/>
</name>
</Patient>
</resource>
</entry>
</Bundle>This bundle contains three Patient resources. The first resource has just one entry for the address attribute. The second Patient resource has two entries containing the same elements for the address attribute. The third Patient resource has a rather messy address attribute, with three entries containing different elements and also two entries for the name attribute.
Let’s see what happens if we extract all attributes:
desc1 <- fhir_table_description(resource = "Patient", sep = " | ")
df1 <- fhir_crack(bundles = bundle, design = desc1, verbose = 0)
df1
# address.city address.country address.type address.use id
# 1 Amsterdam Netherlands physical home id1
# 2 Rome | Stockholm Italy | Sweden physical | postal home | work id2
# 3 Berlin | London France | England postal | postal home | work id3
# name.given
# 1 Marie
# 2 Susie
# 3 Frank | MaxAs you can see, multiple entries for the same attribute (address and name) are pasted together. This works fine for Patient 2, but for Patient 3 you can see a problem with the number of entries that are displayed. The original Patient resource had three (incomplete) address entries, but because the first two of them use complementary elements (use and city vs. type and country), the resulting pasted entries look like there had just been two entries for the address attribute.
You can counter this problem by setting brackets:
desc2 <- fhir_table_description(
resource = "Patient",
sep = " | ",
brackets = c("[", "]")
)
df2 <- fhir_crack(bundles = bundle, design = desc2, verbose = 0)
df2
# address.city address.country
# 1 [1.1]Amsterdam [1.1]Netherlands
# 2 [1.1]Rome | [2.1]Stockholm [1.1]Italy | [2.1]Sweden
# 3 [1.1]Berlin | [3.1]London [2.1]France | [3.1]England
# address.type address.use id
# 1 [1.1]physical [1.1]home [1]id1
# 2 [1.1]physical | [2.1]postal [1.1]home | [2.1]work [1]id2
# 3 [2.1]postal | [3.1]postal [1.1]home | [3.1]work [1]id3
# name.given
# 1 [1.1]Marie
# 2 [1.1]Susie
# 3 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]MaxNow the indices display the entry the value belongs to. That way you can see that Patient resource 3 had three entries for the attribute address and you can also see which attributes belong to which entry.
If you set the format argument to wide, the entries are spread over multiple columns and the indices are attached to column name:
df3 <- fhir_crack(bundles = bundle, design = desc2, format = "wide", verbose = 0)
df3
# [1.1]address.city [2.1]address.city [3.1]address.city [1.1]address.country
# 1 Amsterdam <NA> <NA> Netherlands
# 2 Rome Stockholm <NA> Italy
# 3 Berlin <NA> London <NA>
# [2.1]address.country [3.1]address.country [1.1]address.type [2.1]address.type
# 1 <NA> <NA> physical <NA>
# 2 Sweden <NA> physical postal
# 3 France England <NA> postal
# [3.1]address.type [1.1]address.use [2.1]address.use [3.1]address.use [1]id
# 1 <NA> home <NA> <NA> id1
# 2 <NA> home work <NA> id2
# 3 postal home <NA> work id3
# [1.1]name.given [2.1]name.given
# 1 Marie <NA>
# 2 Susie <NA>
# 3 Frank MaxOf course the above example is a very specific case that only occurs if your resources have multiple entries with complementary elements. In the majority of cases multiple entries in one resource will have the same structure, thus making numbering of those entries superfluous. But the indices also help to disentangle those entries and put them in separate rows, as you’ll see in the next paragraph.
If the table produced by fhir_crack() contains multiple entries, you’ll probably want to divide these entries into distinct observations at some point. Apart from directly spreading those values over multiple columns by using a wide cracking format, the fhircrackr gives you two options to get from a compact table to either a long or a wide format: fhir_melt() and fhir_cast(). The former spreads the entries across rows, creating a long format, the latter spreads them across columns, creating a wide format.
fhir_melt() takes an indexed data frame with multiple entries in one or several columns and spreads (aka melts) the entries in columns over several rows:
fhir_melt(
indexed_data_frame = df2,
columns = "address.city",
brackets = c("[", "]"),
sep = " | ",
all_columns = TRUE
)
# address.city address.country address.type
# 1 [1]Amsterdam [1.1]Netherlands [1.1]physical
# 2 [1]Rome [1.1]Italy | [2.1]Sweden [1.1]physical | [2.1]postal
# 3 [1]Stockholm [1.1]Italy | [2.1]Sweden [1.1]physical | [2.1]postal
# 4 [1]Berlin [2.1]France | [3.1]England [2.1]postal | [3.1]postal
# 5 <NA> [2.1]France | [3.1]England [2.1]postal | [3.1]postal
# 6 [1]London [2.1]France | [3.1]England [2.1]postal | [3.1]postal
# address.use id name.given resource_identifier
# 1 [1.1]home [1]id1 [1.1]Marie 1
# 2 [1.1]home | [2.1]work [1]id2 [1.1]Susie 2
# 3 [1.1]home | [2.1]work [1]id2 [1.1]Susie 2
# 4 [1.1]home | [3.1]work [1]id3 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
# 5 [1.1]home | [3.1]work [1]id3 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
# 6 [1.1]home | [3.1]work [1]id3 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3The new variable resource_identifier records which rows in the created data frame belong to which row (usually equivalent to one resource) in the original data frame. brackets and sep should be given the same character vectors that have been used to build the indices in fhir_crack(). columns is a character vector with the names of the variables you want to melt. You can provide more than one column here but it makes sense to only have variables from the same repeating attribute together in one call to fhir_melt():
cols <- c("address.city", "address.use", "address.type", "address.country")
fhir_melt(
indexed_data_frame = df2,
columns = cols,
brackets = c("[", "]"),
sep = " | ",
all_columns = TRUE
)
# address.city address.country address.type address.use id
# 1 [1]Amsterdam [1]Netherlands [1]physical [1]home [1]id1
# 2 [1]Rome [1]Italy [1]physical [1]home [1]id2
# 3 [1]Stockholm [1]Sweden [1]postal [1]work [1]id2
# 4 [1]Berlin <NA> <NA> [1]home [1]id3
# 5 <NA> [1]France [1]postal <NA> [1]id3
# 6 [1]London [1]England [1]postal [1]work [1]id3
# name.given resource_identifier
# 1 [1.1]Marie 1
# 2 [1.1]Susie 2
# 3 [1.1]Susie 2
# 4 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
# 5 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
# 6 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3If the names of the variables in your data frame have been generated automatically with fhir_crack() you can find all variable names belonging to the same attribute with fhir_common_columns():
cols <- fhir_common_columns(data_frame = df2, column_names_prefix = "address")
cols
# [1] "address.city" "address.country" "address.type" "address.use"With the argument all_columns you can control whether the resulting data frame contains only the molten columns or all columns of the original data frame:
fhir_melt(
indexed_data_frame = df2,
columns = cols,
brackets = c("[", "]"),
sep = " | ",
all_columns = FALSE
)
# resource_identifier address.city address.country address.type address.use
# 1 1 [1]Amsterdam [1]Netherlands [1]physical [1]home
# 2 2 [1]Rome [1]Italy [1]physical [1]home
# 3 2 [1]Stockholm [1]Sweden [1]postal [1]work
# 4 3 [1]Berlin <NA> <NA> [1]home
# 5 3 <NA> [1]France [1]postal <NA>
# 6 3 [1]London [1]England [1]postal [1]workValues on the other variables will just repeat in the newly created rows.
If you try to melt several variables that don’t belong to the same element in one call to fhir_melt(), this will cause problems, because the different elements won’t be combined correctly:
cols <- c(cols, "name.given")
fhir_melt(
indexed_data_frame = df2,
columns = cols,
brackets = c("[", "]"),
sep = " | ",
all_columns = TRUE
)
# address.city address.country address.type address.use id name.given
# 1 [1]Amsterdam [1]Netherlands [1]physical [1]home [1]id1 [1]Marie
# 2 [1]Rome [1]Italy [1]physical [1]home [1]id2 [1]Susie
# 3 [1]Stockholm [1]Sweden [1]postal [1]work [1]id2 <NA>
# 4 [1]Berlin <NA> <NA> [1]home [1]id3 [1]Frank
# 5 <NA> [1]France [1]postal <NA> [1]id3 [1]Max
# 6 [1]London [1]England [1]postal [1]work [1]id3 <NA>
# resource_identifier
# 1 1
# 2 2
# 3 2
# 4 3
# 5 3
# 6 3Instead, melt the attributes one after another:
cols <- fhir_common_columns(data_frame = df2, column_names_prefix = "address")
molten_1 <- fhir_melt(
indexed_data_frame = df2,
columns = cols,
brackets = c("[", "]"),
sep = " | ",
all_columns = TRUE
)
molten_1
# address.city address.country address.type address.use id
# 1 [1]Amsterdam [1]Netherlands [1]physical [1]home [1]id1
# 2 [1]Rome [1]Italy [1]physical [1]home [1]id2
# 3 [1]Stockholm [1]Sweden [1]postal [1]work [1]id2
# 4 [1]Berlin <NA> <NA> [1]home [1]id3
# 5 <NA> [1]France [1]postal <NA> [1]id3
# 6 [1]London [1]England [1]postal [1]work [1]id3
# name.given resource_identifier
# 1 [1.1]Marie 1
# 2 [1.1]Susie 2
# 3 [1.1]Susie 2
# 4 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
# 5 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
# 6 [1.1]Frank | [2.1]Max 3
molten_2 <- fhir_melt(
indexed_data_frame = molten_1,
columns = "name.given",
brackets = c("[", "]"),
sep = " | ",
all_columns = TRUE
)
molten_2
# address.city address.country address.type address.use id name.given
# 1 [1]Amsterdam [1]Netherlands [1]physical [1]home [1]id1 [1]Marie
# 2 [1]Rome [1]Italy [1]physical [1]home [1]id2 [1]Susie
# 3 [1]Stockholm [1]Sweden [1]postal [1]work [1]id2 [1]Susie
# 4 [1]Berlin <NA> <NA> [1]home [1]id3 [1]Frank
# 5 [1]Berlin <NA> <NA> [1]home [1]id3 [1]Max
# 6 <NA> [1]France [1]postal <NA> [1]id3 [1]Frank
# 7 <NA> [1]France [1]postal <NA> [1]id3 [1]Max
# 8 [1]London [1]England [1]postal [1]work [1]id3 [1]Frank
# 9 [1]London [1]England [1]postal [1]work [1]id3 [1]Max
# resource_identifier
# 1 1
# 2 2
# 3 3
# 4 4
# 5 4
# 6 5
# 7 5
# 8 6
# 9 6This will give you the appropriate product of all multiple entries.
Once you have sorted out the multiple entries, you might want to get rid of the indices in your table. This can be achieved using fhir_rm_indices():
fhir_rm_indices(indexed_data_frame = molten_2, brackets = c("[", "]"))
# address.city address.country address.type address.use id name.given
# 1 Amsterdam Netherlands physical home id1 Marie
# 2 Rome Italy physical home id2 Susie
# 3 Stockholm Sweden postal work id2 Susie
# 4 Berlin <NA> <NA> home id3 Frank
# 5 Berlin <NA> <NA> home id3 Max
# 6 <NA> France postal <NA> id3 Frank
# 7 <NA> France postal <NA> id3 Max
# 8 London England postal work id3 Frank
# 9 London England postal work id3 Max
# resource_identifier
# 1 1
# 2 2
# 3 3
# 4 4
# 5 4
# 6 5
# 7 5
# 8 6
# 9 6Again, brackets and sep should be given the same character vector that was used for fhir_crack() and fhir_melt() respectively.
Instead of spreading the entries across rows, you can also spread them across columns using fhir_cast(). As you’ve seen above this can be achieved by setting format = "wide" in fhir_crack(). There is, however, a function that turns a compact table into a wide table and this function is fhir_cast(). It takes a compact table with multiple entries and the brackets and separator that have been used in fhir_crack() as input:
fhir_cast(df2, brackets = c("[", "]"), sep = " | ", verbose = 0)
# [1.1]address.city [2.1]address.city [3.1]address.city [1.1]address.country
# 1 Amsterdam <NA> <NA> Netherlands
# 2 Rome Stockholm <NA> Italy
# 3 Berlin <NA> London <NA>
# [2.1]address.country [3.1]address.country [1.1]address.type [2.1]address.type
# 1 <NA> <NA> physical <NA>
# 2 Sweden <NA> physical postal
# 3 France England <NA> postal
# [3.1]address.type [1.1]address.use [2.1]address.use [3.1]address.use [1]id
# 1 <NA> home <NA> <NA> id1
# 2 <NA> home work <NA> id2
# 3 postal home <NA> work id3
# [1.1]name.given [2.1]name.given
# 1 Marie <NA>
# 2 Susie <NA>
# 3 Frank MaxContrary to fhir_melt() this function requires all column names to reflect the XPath expression of the respective attribute. The column containing information on address/city for example has to be named adress.city because the information of the indices is incorporated in those names to avoid duplicate column names. This column naming scheme is automatically used when you don’t give explicit column names in the table_description/design for fhir_crack() so it makes sense to only cast tables that have automatically generated column names.
The tables produced by fhir_crack(..., format = "wide") and fhir_cast() can also be used to recreate the resources that were cracked in the first place, as you’ll the in the vignette about recreation of resources.