NEL.MESH 0.4.0

Introduction

Nel.Mesh is a Standard-Compliant .NET library built on top of (MESH) to enable software engineers to develop Mesh compliant solutions in .NET

MESH - the Message Exchange for Social Care and Health providing the ability to share data directly between health and care organisations and is the nationally recognised mechanism for this method of data sharing.

Link to NHS Digital

Standard-Compliance

This library was built according to The Standard. The library follows engineering principles, patterns and tooling as recommended by The Standard.

This library was also built to be a community lead effort in order to eventually have all mesh end points covered.

Diagram of components

NOTE: Please find below the methods exposed on the Mesh Client.

Install library?

You can get Nel.Mesh Nuget package by typing:

Install-Package NEL.MESH

Prerequisites

You'll need some things at different stages of your development to integrate with the MESH API. For each environment you use, you'll need a:

• MESH mailbox ID and password
• Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificate
• Shared secret to include in the MESH authorization header

To get started you will need to sign in or create a developer account.

In My applications and Teams Create a new application for the environments needed and from here after a max of 10 days you will be given the appropriate Active Api Keys.

- Request a MESH mailbox

Once NHS Digital have approved your request to use the MESH API, you'll need to request a MESH Mailbox to use in a 'Path to Live integration environment'. This is how you'll interact with the MESH API. A MESH Mailbox is secure and only your organisation can access it.

To request a MESH Mailbox, you'll need to fill in an online form. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete.

You'll need to know:

• Your ODS code.
• The workflow groups or IDs for the files you plan to send or receive.
• The contact details of the person who will be managing the mailbox in your organisation.

Apply Here For Mailbox

NOTE: This could also take a few days to come pack with the details.

- Prerequisites For Live ONLY

This is also called digital on-boarding. You'll need to submit information that demonstrates:

• You have a valid use case
• You can manage risks
• Your software conforms technically with the requirements for this API
• This API can only be used where there is a legal basis to do so and you will be asked you to demonstrate this as part of the digital onboarding process before your software goes live.

Current Mesh Functionality

Local App Settings

To run this package you will need to setup a local app settings file with the following configuration items. Certificates will need to be base64 encoded and the Intermediate can have multiples.

NOTE: The key value will have to be requested from NHS Digital as the version on their website was out of date at time of documenting

{
  "MeshConfiguration": 
  {
    "MailboxId": "",
    "Password": "",
    "Key": "",
    "Url": "",
    "MexClientVersion": "ApiDocs==0.0.1",
    "MexOSName": "Windows",
    "MexOSVersion": "#11",
    "RootCertificate": "",
    "IntermediateCertificates": [""],
    "ClientCertificate": "",
    "ClientCertificatePassword": "",
    "MaxChunkSizeInMegabytes": ""
  }
}

How to Contribute

If you want to contribute to this project please before hand review the following documents to gain an understanding of the patterns and practices used in building this package:

• The Standard
• C# Coding Standard
• The Team Standard

If you have a question make sure you open an issue.