HL7 parsing in PHP [closed]

Question

I'm looking into options for parsing HL7 messages via PHP. I'm aware of the Net_HL7 package on PEAR but to be perfectly honest, I don't think that I want to base my code around a seemingly 'abandoned' package and even if I did, I just don't think that my brain suits the functions 'correctly'. Maybe if I had more of an HL7 background it would make a bit more sense, I don't know.

Anyway: I'm guessing that 95% of the time, I'm going to be parsing and reading data from messages. The other 5%, I'll be creating and/or sending messages.

I don't necessarily need to do any form of validation on the messages themselves, I just need to pull/push data.

I definitely need support for 'non-XML' HL7 v2.x, but naturally XML-based v2 and v3 would be a bonus.

So does anyone have any suggestions as to other libraries that I might use? I'm looking for pure PHP solutions as I want to have minimal requirements on the server that aren't "copy this directory here".

Thanks!

Answer 1

Depending on how much hl7 work you need done you can either roll your own, or try integrating with tools that provide an interface in a lower level language (like C++) and build some sort of php wrapper around it.

The company I work at does provide an hl7 parsing/mapping tool, but without the php interface. At the very least looking at the manual will give you a good overview of hl7 and how hard it will be to write your own hl7 parser.

Answer 2

If you want an open source solution for hl7 parsing then I recommend Mirth. You can check out how Mirth does its' hl7 parsing by checking out the source code. good luck.