Important: Supported PHP version has been updated to 7.3+. Last supported versions: for PHP 7.2 => 2.0.2, for PHP 7.0 or 7.1 => 1.5.4

Introduction

A PHP-based HL7 v2.x Parsing, Generation and Sending library, inspired from the famous Perl Net-HL7 package.

Installation

composer require aranyasen/hl7

Usage

Import library

// First, import classes from the library as needed...
use Aranyasen\HL7\Message; // If Message is used
use Aranyasen\HL7\Segment; // If Segment is used
use Aranyasen\HL7\Segments\MSH; // If MSH is used
// ... and so on

Parsing

// Create a Message object from a HL7 string
$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\\&|1|\rPID|||abcd|\r"); // Either \n or \r can be used as segment endings
$pid = $msg->getSegmentByIndex(1);
echo $pid->getField(3); // prints 'abcd'
echo $msg->toString(true); // Prints entire HL7 string

// Get the first segment
$msg->getFirstSegmentInstance('PID'); // Returns the first PID segment. Same as $msg->getSegmentsByName('PID')[0];

// Check if a segment is present in the message object
$msg->hasSegment('PID'); // return true or false based on whether PID is present in the $msg object

// Check if a message is empty
$msg = new Message();
$msg->isempty(); // Returns true

Creating new messages

// Create an empty Message object, and populate MSH and PID segments... 
$msg = new Message();
$msh = new MSH();
$msg->addSegment($msh); // Message is: "MSH|^~\&|||||20171116140058|||2017111614005840157||2.3|\n"

// Create any custom segment
$abc = new Segment('ABC');
$abc->setField(1, 'xyz');
$abc->setField(2, 0);
$abc->setField(4, ['']); // Set an empty field at 4th position. 2nd and 3rd positions will be automatically set to empty
$abc->clearField(2); // Clear the value from field 2
$msg->setSegment($abc, 1); // Message is now: "MSH|^~\&|||||20171116140058|||2017111614005840157||2.3|\nABC|xyz|\n"

// Create a defined segment (To know which segments are defined in this package, look into Segments/ directory)
// Advantages of defined segments over custom ones (shown above) are 1) Helpful setter methods, 2) Auto-incrementing segment index 
$pid = new PID(); // Automatically creates PID segment, and adds segment index at PID.1
$pid->setPatientName([$lastname, $firstname, $middlename, $suffix]); // Use a setter method to add patient's name at standard position (PID.5)
$pid->setField('abcd', 5); // Apart from standard setter methods, you can manually set a value at any position too
unset($pid); // Destroy the segment and decrement the id number. Useful when you want to discard a segment.

// Creating multiple message objects may have an unexpected side-effect: segments start with wrong index values (Check tests/MessageTest for explanation)...
// Use 4th argument as true, or call resetSegmentIndices() on $msg object to reset segment indices to 1
$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\&|||||||ORM^O01||P|2.3.1|", null, true, true);
// ... any segments added here will now start index from 1, as expected.

// Sometimes you may want to have exact index values, rather than auto-incrementing for each instance of a segment
// Use 5th argument as false...
$hl7String = "MSH|^~\&|||||||ORU^R01|00001|P|2.3.1|\n" . "OBX|1||11^AA|\n" . "OBX|1||22^BB|\n";
$msg = new Message($hl7String, null, true, true, false); // $msg contains both OBXs with given indexes in the string

// Create a segment with empty sub-fields retained
$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\\&|1|\rPV1|1|O|^AAAA1^^^BB|", null, true); // Third argument 'true' forces to keep all sub fields
$pv1 = $msg->getSegmentByIndex(1);
$fields = $pv1->getField(3); // $fields is ['', 'AAAA1', '', '', 'BB']

// Create/send message with segment-ending bar character (|) removed
$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\\&|1|\nABC|||xxx\n", ['SEGMENT_ENDING_BAR' => false]);
$msg->toString(true); // Returns "MSH|^~\&|1\nABC|||xxx\n"
(new Connection($ip, $port))->send($msg); // Sends the message without ending bar-characters (details on Connection below) 

// Specify custom values for separators, HL7 version etc.
$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\\&|1|\rPV1|1|O|^AAAA1^^^BB|", ['SEGMENT_SEPARATOR' => '\r\n', 'HL7_VERSION' => '2.3']);

// Segment with separator character (~) creates sub-arrays containing each sub-segment
$message = new Message("MSH|^~\&|||||||ADT^A01||P|2.3.1|\nPID|||3^0~4^1"); // Creates [[3,0], [4,1]]
        
// To create a single array instead, pass 'true' as 5th argument. This may be used to retain behavior from previous releases
// Notice: Since this leads to a non-standard behavior, it may be removed in future
$message = new Message("MSH|^~\&|||||||ADT^A01||P|2.3.1|\nPID|||3^0~4^1", null, false, false, true, true); // Creates ['3', '0~4', '1']

Send messages to remote listeners

Side note: In order to run Connection you need to install PHP ext-sockets https://www.php.net/manual/en/sockets.installation.php

$ip = '127.0.0.1'; // An IP
$port = '12001'; // And Port where a HL7 listener is listening
$message = new Message($hl7String); // Create a Message object from your HL7 string

// Create a Socket and get ready to send message. Optionally add timeout in seconds as 3rd argument (default: 10 sec)
$connection = new Connection($ip, $port);
$response = $connection->send($message); // Send to the listener, and get a response back
echo $response->toString(true); // Prints ACK from the listener

ACK

Handle ACK message returned from a remote HL7 listener...

$ack = (new Connection($ip, $port))->send($message); // Send a HL7 to remote listener
$returnString = $ack->toString(true);
if (strpos($returnString, 'MSH') === false) {
    echo "Failed to send HL7 to 'IP' => $ip, 'Port' => $port";
}
$msa = $ack->getSegmentsByName('MSA')[0];
$ackCode = $msa->getAcknowledgementCode();
if ($ackCode[1] === 'A') {
    echo "Recieved ACK from remote\n";
}
else {
    echo "Recieved NACK from remote\n";
    echo "Error text: " . $msa->getTextMessage();
}

Create an ACK response from a given HL7 message:

$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\\&|1|\rABC|1||^AAAA1^^^BB|", null, true);
$ackResponse = new ACK($msg);

Options can be passed while creating ACK object:

$msg = new Message("MSH|^~\\&|1|\rABC|1||^AAAA1^^^BB|", null, true);
$ackResponse = new ACK($msg, null, ['SEGMENT_SEPARATOR' => '\r\n', 'HL7_VERSION' => '2.5']);

APIs

This package exposes a number of public methods for convenient HL7 handling. Some examples are:

1. Considering you have a Message object (say, $msg = new Message(file_get_contents('somefile.hl7'));)

    $msg->toFile('/path/to/some.hl7'); // Write to a file
    $msg->isOru(); // Check if it's an ORU
    $msg->isOrm(); // Check if it's an ORM

Visit docs\README for details on available APIs

All segment level getter/setter APIs can be used in two ways -

• If a position index isn't provided as argument (1st argument for getters, 2nd for setters), a standard index is used.
  $pid->setPatientName('John Doe') -> Set patient name at position 5 as per HL7 v2.3 standard
  $pid->getPatientAddress() -> Get patient address from standard 11th position

• To use a custom position index, provide it in the argument:
  $pid->setPatientName('John Doe', 6) -> Set patient name at 6th position in PID segment
  $pid->getPatientAddress(12) -> Get patient address from 12th position

TODOs

• Data Validation
• Search by regex and return segment/field/index
• Define more segments