Technical specification

This technical specification explains the content of the OS OAuth2 API.

If you are not familiar with the OS OAuth 2 API please read the overview documentation before proceeding.

API reference

Generating an access token

To create an access token, you must send a HTTP POST request to the OS DataHub OAuth 2 token endpoint. The endpoint is secured with HTTP Basic Authentication, where the username is the Project API Key and the password is the Project API Secret.

OAuth 2 Token Endpoint

https://api.os.uk/oauth2/token/v1

Required HTTP Headers

Name	Value	Description
Authorisation	Basic <encoded credentials>	The encoded credentials are a base-64 encoded version of a string containing the username (Project API Key), a single : and the password (Project API Secret). Once you have the encoded value you should set the value of the Authorization header to 'Basic', a space, and the encoded value, e.g. Basic <encodedValue>.
Content-Type	application/x-www-form-urlencoded	The request body must be form-encoded. Many HTTP frameworks have support for form-encoded messages and will set the content type automatically.

Request body

The request body must be form-encoded with the following property:

Name	Value	Description
grant_type	client_credentials	The only supported grant_type is client_credentials

Response body

The response body is returned as a JSON object with the following properties:

Name	Example Value	Description
access_token	ZclClFcksJlZ19vnJOt09Yj3xme0	The new access token.
expires_in	299	The time until the token expires, in seconds.
issued_at	1576249823754	The time at which the token was created.
token_type	Bearer	The type of the token. This is always Bearer.

Using the access token

Once you have generated your access token, you can use it to authenticate your requests to other OS Data Hub APIs.

To use the access token you must include an Authorization header on your API request. The value of the Authorization header should be 'Bearer', a space, and then the access token, for example, Bearer <accessToken>.