Getting started - Authentication

Let's get started by hooking up to an openCDR via the openEHR REST API.

This API is now supported by most publicly available CDRs, including Better, DIPS, Code24 and Ehrbase.

We have included examples for the Better CDR used by the Apperta Code4Health platform but they have also been tested against the ehrBase CDR.

Authentication

All of the openCDR API calls require some sort of authentication in the header.

In production this is likely to be something like JSON Web Tokens (JWT) but for demo purposes both ehrBase and betterCDR support Basic Auth based on a Username and Password.

Basic Authentication

If you have a Postman environment file related to your openCDR, you should be able to find the Username and Password, and possibly the Basic Auth token, pre-calculated.

If it is not pre-calculated, it is easy to do so with code like this Typescript.

 const authString = btoa(`${username}:${password}`)
 const authToken = `Basic: ${authString}`

You then need to send that token in the Authorization header of your REST call e.g.

curl --location \
--request GET 'https://cdr.code4health.org/rest/openehr/v1/definition/template/adl1.4' \
--header 'Accept: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic YTgxZjQ3YzYtYTc1Ny00ZTM0LWI2NDQtM2NjYzYyYjRhMDFjOiQyYSQxMCQ2MTlraQ=='

Connecting to the CDR

To test our basic connection to the CDR, we will perform a very simple List templates call to list the openEHR templates currently registered with the CDR -> Working with openEHR Templates