Client Credentials Grant
If your client will interact with PKB on behalf of a computer system, rather than a person, then you need to use the Client Credentials Grant workflow.
An example of that scenario would be a hybrid mail provider, making use of ourread receipt API.
The organisation you wish to send/receive data for must have granted you authorisation before you will be able to make an API call, but you are able to obtain an access token independently of whether or not any such permissions have been granted.
Note: these examples are written for http://sandbox.patientsknowbest.com - replace the URL as needed if you are connecting to a different environment.
Client uses client ID and client secret to obtain an access token
Request
Description
When you were established as a PKB partner, you will have been issued with a client ID and a client secret. You use these to obtain an access token when you need one.
POST https://oauth2.sandbox.patientsknowbest.com/api/oauth/token
Parameters
Parameter | Type | Optionality | Description | Example |
grant_type | Form parameter | Required | Must be "client_credentials" | client_credentials |
Authorization | HTTP header | Required | This is a standard HTTP basic authorization header. The value should be a Base64 encoding of your client ID and client secret, concatenated together with a colon (:) separator, and prepended with "Basic ". For example, if your client ID was example_client_id and your client secret was example_secret then your header value should be: Basic ZXhhbXBsZV9jbGllbnRfaWQ6ZXhhbXBsZV9jbGllbnRfc2VjcmV0 | ZXhhbXBsZV9jbGllbnRfaWQ6ZXhhbXBsZV9jbGllbnRfc2VjcmV0 |
Content-Type | HTTP header | Required | Must be "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" | application/x-www-form-urlencoded |
Response
Description
PKB responds with the access token in JSON. Note that a refresh token is never provided from a Client Credentials Grant workflow; when your access token expires you can repeat the Client Credentials Grant workflow to obtain a new one.
Parameters
Parameter | Type | Optionality | Description | Example |
access_token | JSON parameter | Required | This is the access token that can subsequently be used to authenticate against the relevant API, and gain access to the functionality | eyJhbGxxxx |
token_type | JSON parameter | Required | This is always "bearer" | bearer |
expires_in | JSON parameter | Required | This indicates the number of seconds for which the access_token is valid | 600 |
scope | JSON parameter | Required | Currently, scopes are not supported. As such, this will always be "none". | none |
jti | JSON parameter | Required | A unique identifier for this token. | 24eb74c3-ad03-4c4f-a93d-786cf47b6c2f |
Example
HTTP/1.1 200 OK { "access_token":"abcdef", "token_type":"bearer", "expires_in":600, "scope":"none", "jti":"24eb74c3-ad03-4c4f-a93d-786cf47b6c2f" }
Error handling
If the authentication fails, then an error will be returned to you.
Example Error
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized { "error":"unauthorized" "error_description":"Full authentication is required to access this resource" }
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