User-restricted RESTful APIs - NHS login separate authentication and authorisation

This page explains how to integrate your software with our user-restricted RESTful APIs.

In particular, it describes the NHS login separate authentication and authorisation pattern, which uses our OAuth 2.0 authorisation server. It also describes the signed JWT authentication and authorisation pattern which is used for application authentication.

For a full list of available patterns, see Security and authorisation.

Use this pattern when:

• you want to access a user-restricted RESTful API

• you want to separate authentication from authorisation

• the end user is registered at a GP practice in England, or is receiving NHS services in England

• you need the end user's identity information

In this pattern, authentication and authorisation are done separately. You might authenticate the user when they sign in but only get authorisation to call the API if and when you need it. You do authentication directly with NHS login and then separately do authorisation with our OAuth2.0 authorisation service. You need to register your application separately with NHS login and with the API Platform.

The end user authenticates by entering their NHS login email address and password. The user then needs to provide a mobile phone number to receive a one time password (OTP) via a text message. The user needs to enter this OTP when prompted and press continue.

The end user has now verified the ownership of an email address and mobile phone number. This means they have an NHS login with the lowest level of identity verification. For details, see levels of verification.

The following diagram illustrates the pattern:

The following sequence diagram shows how the various components interact:

In words:

1. The calling application forwards the user's browser to the NHS login authentication endpoint.

2. The user signs in to their NHS login account (using a username and password, or other method).

3. NHS login redirects the user's browser back to the calling application, with an authorisation code.

4. The calling application calls the NHS login token endpoint, with the authorisation code, and receives an access token and an ID token in return.

5. Time passes, until the user needs to access a user-restricted API.

6. The calling application calls our OAuth2.0 token endpoint (/oauth/token), passing the ID token, and receives an access token (a token exchange).

7. The calling application calls the user-restricted API, including the access token.

You can learn how to use this security pattern with our tutorials written in:

• Java
• PHP
• C#

Bear in mind that the tutorial only teaches you the basic flow. You'll also need to read the detailed integration instructions below to understand how to handle error scenarios.

The following diagram shows the high level integration stages with the API platform and the sections below it explain in detail how to use this security pattern.

As well as production, we have a number of test environments. Each environment is paired with a suitable NHS login environment. In the steps below, make sure you use the appropriate URL base path:

For more information on testing, see Testing APIs.

This section explains the detailed steps to set up your application before you can initiate authorisation. The steps involved are:

• register your application with NHS login
• register your application on the API platform
• generate a key pair
• register your public key 

To use this pattern you need to register your application with NHS login directly. NHS login provides a number of ways for patients to authenticate their identity when accessing national clinical information systems.

• For information on what NHS login is, see NHS login.

• For information on how to register your application and integrate with NHS login, see NHS login for partners and developers.

Note:  There are a number of distinct stages and this step is the setup stage. In a later stage, this configuration allows you to obtain an ID token. The ID token, in turn, provides an access token for calling the API and retrieve the data.

To use this pattern, you need to register a new application on the API platform. This allows you to select and manage which APIs the application can access.

You need a separate application for your production environment. Best practice is to register one application for each of the test environments you want to access - development, integration test, or (for Hello World API only) sandbox:

1. If you do not already have one, create a developer account.

2. Navigate to my developer account and sign in.

3. Select 'Environment access' on my developer account.

4. Select 'Add new application'.

5. Enter the details of your application including application owner and application name to create your new application.

6. Select 'View your new application' to check or edit your application details.
7. Click the 'Edit' button to make a note of the API key. If you are editing the security details for production applications, follow the online instructions to set up mobile authentication. 
8. Click the 'Add APIs' button to add the API you want to use.

For the Hello World (Sandbox) example, you need to select the API "Hello World API - User Restricted (Sandbox)".

You need to generate a private/public key pair, which is used to create a client_assertion later in the process, for each application you created in Step 2 to access testing or production environments. It must be a 4096-bit RSA key pair.

Note that if you generate your own JWKS file, you must use the RS512 algorithm to do this.

Decide on your Key Identifier (KID) - a unique name to identify the key pair in use. The KID will be used to refer to the key pair when constructing and posting the JWT.

We recommend:

• test-1 for testing
• prod-1 for production use

If you create multiple applications to test across multiple test environments, you need a different KID and key pair for each environment.

If you create subsequent key pairs for key rotation, number them sequentially, for example test-2, test-3 and so on.

Do not re-use a KID.

For development and integration test environments only, you might find it easiest to use an external key generator to create a private-public key pair, and a JWKS file. Do not use this for a production environment.

For production environments (or test environments), generating your own public-private key locally is much more trustworthy.

Generate a private/public key pair using an external key generator - for test environments only

There are several external key generators available on the internet, and while we cannot endorse any one in particular, we know people have had success with https://mkjwk.org/.

To use it, enter:

This produces:

• "Public Key" - your JWKS file for uploading
• "Private Key (X.509 PEM Format)" - your private key in PEM format
• "Public Key (X.509 PEM Format)" - your public key in PEM format

Important - always keep your private key private. Do not send it to us!

Go to Step 4.

Generate your own private/public key pair - for production or test environments

On Windows, the easiest way to get the BASH shell tools to do this is to install Git For Windows.
On Linux and Mac OS, the BASH shell comes as standard.

Open a BASH shell command prompt and define your KID:

KID=YOUR_KID

Then run both of the following commands:

1. openssl genrsa -out $KID.pem 4096
2. openssl rsa -in $KID.pem -pubout -outform PEM -out $KID.pem.pub

These commands create the following files:

• YOUR_KID.pem - your private key in PEM format
• YOUR_KID.key.pub - your public key in PEM format

Important - always keep your private key private. Do not send it to us!

If this is a key pair for a production application, and you want us to host your public key, go to Step 4.

If this is a key pair for development or integration testing environments, or a production environment key you want to host yourself, you also need to create a JWKS file to upload.

To do this, first get the "modulus" of your private key, by entering the following BASH shell commands:

Next, build your JWKS file (using the RS512 algorithm) from your KID and public key modulus by entering the following BASH shell commands:

This creates the JWKS file YOUR_KID.json for uploading in Step 4.

We use your public key to verify your client_assertion later in the process.

There are two ways to do this - either host your own public key, or ask us to host it for you.

Host your own public key

To do this, for applications in development or integration test environments:

1. Create a JWKS endpoint to publicly host your public key and note the URL.
2. Sign in to your developer account.
3. Select 'My applications and teams', 'My applications' and then 'Manage your applications'.
4. Select the application you want to add your JWKS endpoint to.
5. Edit the public key URL
6. Enter the URL of your JWKS endpoint and click Save.

If this public key is for a production application, contact us and tell us:

• your application ID
• the public key URL you want to add, or update

Ask us to host your public key

For applications in development or integration test environments:

1. Sign in to your developer account.
2. Select 'My applications and teams', 'My applications' and then 'Manage your applications'.
3. Select the application you want to add your JWKS public key to.
4. Edit the public key URL.
5. Choose the JWKS file in JSON format for your public key and click Upload.
6. Once it's confirmed as a valid public key, click Save.

We use this public key to create a JWKS endpoint to host your public key and link it to your application in the development or integration environment.

For production applications, contact us and make sure you tell us:

• your application’s App ID, from step 2
• your KID, from step 3
• your public key, from step 3, as an attachment in PEM format
• the APIs you want to use

We use this information to create a JWKS endpoint to host your public key and link it to your application in production.

In the future, we hope to make this process more self-service for production applications. You can track progress or vote for this feature on our interactive product backlog.

This section explains the steps to get your application authorised before calling the user-restricted API. The steps involved are:

• authorise the user with NHS login
• generate a client assertion
• exchange NHS login ID token for access token
• store our access token for later use

You need to authenticate the user with NHS login. Successful authentication results in an ID token being issued to the callback endpoint that you registered with NHS login.

Your software needs to follow a standard OIDC authorisation code flow with NHS login. OIDC clients Initiate the NHS login authorisation sequence from the browser by calling the NHS login authorize endpoint. Once the user authentication is successful, your web server should call the NHS login token end point and receive a number of tokens including the ID token.

The ID token has a lifetime of 1 hours, after 1 hour the user must re-authenticate. We strongly recommend to exchange the ID token for our access and refresh tokens as soon as possible. 

You need the ID token in step 7.

Before you can call a user-restricted API, you first need to generate a client assertion. This happens at runtime, so you need to code it into your application.

A client assertion is a JSON Web Token (JWT) that consists of three parts: a header, a payload and a signature. The header specifies the authentication method and token type. The payload contains data (detailed below) and the signature is used to verify the token itself.

We strongly recommend that you use a library to generate your JWT, as this can be a complicated process to perform by hand.

Header

The JWT header includes the following fields:

Example

{
  "alg": "RS512",
  "typ": "JWT",
  "kid": "test-1"
}

Payload

The JWT payload includes the following fields:

Example

{
  "iss": "<test-app-api-key>",
  "sub": "<test-app-api-key>",
  "aud": "https://api.service.nhs.uk/oauth2/token",
  "jti": "<unique-per-request-id>",
  "exp": <current-time-plus-5mins-from-jwt-creation>
}

Signature

The JWT signature consists of the contents of the header and payload, signed with your private key. We recommend you use a library to generate this.

Assembling the JWT

The JWT consists of:

• the header, base64 encoded
• a period separator
• the payload, base64 encoded
• a period separator
• the signature, base64 encoded

Examples

The following code snippets show how to generate and sign a JWT in Python and C#.

For the Python example, PyJWT requires the installation of the crypto extra in order to use RSA keys. To install this:

python -m pip install PyJWT[crypto]

Once you integrate with NHS login and successfully authenticate the user, you receive an ID token. Call our token endpoint to exchange the ID token for an access token. This call is an HTTP POST to the following endpoint:

https://api.service.nhs.uk/oauth2/token

Note: the above URL is for our production environment. For other environments, see Environments and testing above.

You need to include the following form parameters in your call:

Here is a complete example, as a CURL command:

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.service.nhs.uk/oauth2/token'\
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded'\
--data-urlencode 'grant_type=urn:ietf:params:oauth:grant-type:token-exchange'\
--data-urlencode 'subject_token_type=urn:ietf:params:oauth:token-type:id_token'\
--data-urlencode 'client_assertion_type=urn:ietf:params:oauth:client-assertion-type:jwt-bearer'\
--data-urlencode 'subject_token={ID token received from NHS login in step 5}\
--data-urlencode 'client_assertion={jwt token}

If the request is valid, the OAuth 2.0 authorisation server responds with a HTTP status 200 and a normal OAuth 2.0 response from the token endpoint. This response contains the following parameters:

Here’s an example:

Error scenarios

If there are any issues with your call to our token endpoint, we return an error response, as follows:

Your access token lasts for 10 minutes and you can use it multiple times. To more than one API call for this user, store your access token securely for later use.

This reduces the load on our authorisation server and also reduces the chance of your application hitting its rate limit.

For details on what to do when your access token expires, see refresh your access token below.

This section explains the detailed activities that you need to perform to call a user-restricted API. The activities involved are:

• call a user-restricted API
• refresh our access token
• request a new access token from us

To call our user-restricted APIs, you need to include the following header in your call:

• Authorization = Bearer <your access token from step 7>

Here's an example, using a CURL command:

curl -X GET https://sandbox.api.service.nhs.uk/hello-world/hello/user\
-H "Authorization: Bearer [your access token from step 7]"\

Note: the URL in the above example is for our sandbox environment. For other environments, see Environments and testing above.

All being well, you receive an appropriate response from the API, for example:

HTTP Status: 200

{
  "message": "Hello User!"
}

Error scenarios

If there is an issue with your access token, we return one of the following error responses:

For detailed error conditions, see the relevant API specification in our API catalogue.

Your access token from step 7 above expires after 10 minutes and must be refreshed to avoid user re-authentication (see step 5 above).

If your access token has expired, when you call a user-restricted API, we return the following error:

Each access token has a corresponding refresh token. To refresh the access token, submit the expired token’s corresponding refresh token to our token endpoint using grant_type of refresh_token. We return a new pair of access token and it's corresponding refresh token without re-authenticating the user.

You need to include the following form parameters in your request to the token endpoint:

If you refresh an access token before it expires, the new access token invalidates the original access token immediately. 

You can continue to refresh access tokens for up to 1 hour. After 1 hour, you must repeat step 5 above.

Example request

curl -X POST -H "content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" --data \

"client_secret=[YOUR-SECRET]\

&client_id=[YOUR-API-KEY]\

&grant_type=refresh_token\

&refresh_token=[REFRESH_TOKEN]" \

https://api.service.nhs.uk/oauth2/token

Note: the above URL is for our production environment. For other environments, see Environments and testing.

Example response

Error scenarios

If there are any issues with your call to our token endpoint, in addition to the errors mentioned in step 7, we return the following refresh token specific errors: 

You can continue to request new access_tokens for up to 1 hour.

After that, calls to our token endpoint returns the following error:

If this happens, you must send the user back through the full authorisation process from step 5 above.

If you have any concerns about the session length regarding your use case then then contact us about  about it and we will work with you to make it a smooth as possible user experience.

For details on how to revoke an access token, contact us.