Authenticate a client

Authenticating with your client details to retrieve an access token using OAuth 2.0

Now that you have created a client when you want to perform an API request, you must first authenticate and receive an OpenCRVS access token. The token endpoint is OAuth 2.0 compliant.

Client access tokens are valid for a maximum of 10 minutes. After it expires you must authenticate again to retrieve a new access token.

You can use our Postman collections to test all client functionality. Postman is a tool you can download to test API access before building your integrations.

URL

POST https://auth.<your_domain>/token

Request payload

Example URL

https://auth.<your_domain>/token

POST parameter	Sample value	Description
client_id	2fd153ab-86c8-45fb-990d-721140e46061	The client id used in the authentication process for system clients.
client_secret	8636abe2-affb-4238-8bff-200ed3652d1e	The client secret used in the authentication process for system clients.
grant_type	client_credentials	The only supported grant type is client_credentials

Request Response

{
    "access_token": "eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6Ikp...",
}

The token is a JWT containing with the following structure and must be included as a header:Authorization: Bearer <token> in all future API requests. The content of an OpenCRVS access token looks like this:

Token Header

Parameter	Sample value	Description
alg	RS256	Signing algorithm.
typ	JWT	This value is always JWT.

Token Payload

Parameter	Sample value	Description
scope	['recordsearch']	An array of OpenCRVS roles for authorization permissions to access. These are defined as a feature of the OpenCRVS core. Approved scopes are health, nationalId, ageCheck. If you require a new scope, please open a feature request
iat	1593712289	When the JWT was created.
exp	1594317089	When the JWT expires - For clients this is set to 10 minutes by default, but this is configurable in the resources package.
aud	['opencrvs.auth']	An array of services that will respond to this JWT.
iss	'opencrvs.auth'	The issuing service of the JWT.
sub	'5ee75eb2104ccf88d9ac0c3d'	A unique client id in our database.