FHIRPath Function: descendants

Returns a collection with all descendant nodes of all items in the input collection. The result does not include the items in the input collection themselves. This function is a shorthand for repeat(children()). Note that the ordering of the children is undefined and using functions like first() on the result may return different results on different platforms.

Note: Many of these functions will result in a set of items of different underlying types. It may be necessary to use ofType() as described in the previous section to maintain type safety. See Type safety and strict evaluation for more information about type safe use of FHIRPath expressions.

Summary

• Category: Tree navigation
• Section: 5.9.2
• Return Type: collection
• Empty Input Result: empty
• Errors on Multiple Input: false

Description

Returns a collection with all descendant nodes of all items in the input collection. The result does not include the nodes in the input collection themselves.

Arguments

• none

Type Mapping

• Any-Any

Example

Patient.descendants() // returns all descendant elements of Patient