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.
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.
The request must be made as a POST to the token endpoint. The URL of the token endpoint will vary depending on:
The environment you are connecting to (e.g. sandbox, UK production, EU production, etc.)
The API endpoint that you are calling (the Facade and Messaging FHIR endpoints share one token endpoint, which differs from the token endpoint for the Customer and Aggregated FHIR endpoints)
Please see the Connectivity page for details.
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 |
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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