Create FHIR resources using conditional create to avoid duplicate submissions
domain: fhir · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Construct the resource JSON payload with all required FHIR R4 fields for the resource type (e.g., Patient, Observation, Condition).
Determine a stable business identifier that uniquely identifies the resource (e.g., an external system ID stored in resource.identifier[]).
Add an If-None-Exist header to the POST request: If-None-Exist: identifier=[system]|[value]; the server will create the resource only if no existing resource matches the search criteria.
POST to [base]/[ResourceType] with the If-None-Exist header; a 201 Created response means the resource was newly created; a 200 OK means a match was found and no duplicate was created.
Extract the Location header from a 201 response to obtain the logical ID assigned by the server; store it for subsequent updates.
For updates, use PUT [base]/[ResourceType]/[id] with the full resource body; include If-Match: W/"[versionId]" to prevent lost-update conflicts.
Known gotchas
If-None-Exist is not supported by all servers; verify support in the CapabilityStatement (rest.resource[].conditionalCreate = true) before relying on it.
A conditional create that matches multiple existing resources returns a 412 Precondition Failed; the search criteria in If-None-Exist must be specific enough to match at most one resource.
Omitting the If-None-Exist header on repeated POSTs will create duplicate resources; always use conditional create or upsert patterns for idempotent writes.
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