How to include the full object instead of "contained" in HAPI FHIR

Question

I am very new to hapi FHIR, I am trying to encode the request in following format.

   CoverageEligibilityRequest coverageEligibilityRequest =  new CoverageEligibilityRequest();
   Patient patient = new Patient().addIdentifier(new Identifier().setType(getPatientIdentifierCodeableConcept()).setSystem("http://www.abc.xyz").setValue("123"));
   coverageEligibilityRequest.setPatient(new Reference(patient));

Above code is java snippet for populating the patient in CoverageEligibilityRequest.

{
  "resourceType": "Bundle",
  "type": "batch",
  "entry": [ {
    "resource": {
      "resourceType": "CoverageEligibilityRequest",
      "id": "7890",
      "contained": [ {
        "resourceType": "Patient",
        "id": "1",
        "identifier": [ {
          "type": {
            "coding": [ {
             ...
             ...

}

But I want the request should be of following format

{
  "resourceType": "Bundle",
  "type": "batch",
  "entry": [ {
    "resource": {
      "resourceType": "CoverageEligibilityRequest",
      "id": "7890",
      "patient": {
        "type": "Patient",
        "identifier": {
          "type": {
            "coding": [ {
              ...
              ...

            } ]
          },

where I want to omit contained with actual string?

Answer 1

FHIR doesn't generally let you express an entire graph of objects as a single resource, so if you're trying to send a Patient resource as part of a CoverageEligibilityRequest resource, the only way you can do that is by setting the patient in the contained field. The CoverageEligibilityResource.patient field is defined as a Reference type and so can only contain the data allowed by a Reference data type and not arbitrary data.

It seems like what you actually want to do is to add a Patient to the HAPI FHIR server and a CoverageEligibilityRequest resource that references the patient. The right way to do this in FHIR is to construct a single batch or transaction bundle containing both of the resources. Basically, you want to construct a Bundle that looks something like this:

{
  "resourceType": "Bundle",
  "type": "batch",
  "entry": [ {
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "Patient",
        "id": "1",
        "identifier": [ {
          "type": {
            "coding": [ {
             ...
      }
    }, {
      "resource": {
        "resourceType": "CoverageEligibilityRequest",
        "id": "7890",
        "patient": "Patient/1",
        ...

The easiest way to construct something similar in HAPI FHIR would be to use a transaction bundle like this:

IGenericClient client = ...
CoverageEligibilityRequest coverageEligibilityRequest =  new CoverageEligibilityRequest();
Patient patient = new Patient().addIdentifier(new Identifier().setType(getPatientIdentifierCodeableConcept()).setSystem("http://www.abc.xyz").setValue("123"));
coverageEligibilityRequest.setPatient(new Reference(patient));
client.transaction().withResources(patient, coverageEligibilityRequest);