How to differentiate CDA from XML file?

Question

I have ruby module which will validate the XML file against CDA schema. The XML file type is

text/xml

If the file is identified as CDA then

1.What content type I need to set to the file so that the application which renders the XML file can identify it as CDA.

I have googled like "content types for CDA", "MIME types for CDA" and much more but I could not locate the answer.

Any links, suggestions is appreciated.

Answer 1

A CDA is just XML like any other XML file. It will have an associated schema that it has to validate against. The validation of the XML against the CDA.xsd is what makes it a CDA (Clinical Document Architecture) file.

So, I guess to answer the question, it will be a text/xml MIME type, like any other XML file.

Answer 2

The canonical media type of a CDA is text/xml, see this example in the CDA R2 spec. When exchanging CDA there is the intent that metadata would be exchanged along with the document. This metadata has elements which are intended to help the consumer identify whether the associated document is CDA and if so what type of CDA it is. Keith Boone has some blog posts on the topic; Classifying documents in XDS and What is the purpose of xds formatcode are good starts.