Authentication

Outdated: this section documents The Things Network V2, which is no longer maintained. See the documentation for The Things Stack V3, or browse the V2 docs index.

Currently, there are two methods of authenticating to the gRPC and HTTP APIs:

Bearer token: OAuth 2.0 Bearer JSON Web Tokens (preferred)
Access keys: Application access keys (only for ApplicationManager API)

Bearer Token #

This authentication method is the preferred method of authenticating.

gRPC #

You can authenticate to the gRPC endpoint by supplying a token field in the Metadata. The value of this field should be the JSON Web Token.

Example (Go):

md := metadata.Pairs(
  "token", "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiJ9.eyJhcHBzIjp7InRlc3QiOlsic2V0dGluZ3MiXX19.VGhpcyBpcyB0aGUgc2lnbmF0dXJl",
)
ctx := metadata.NewOutgoingContext(context.Background(), md)

HTTP #

For HTTP Endpoints, you should supply the Authorization header: Authorization: Bearer <token>.

Example:

Authorization: Bearer eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiJ9.eyJhcHBzIjp7InRlc3QiOlsic2V0dGluZ3MiXX19.VGhpcyBpcyB0aGUgc2lnbmF0dXJl

Access Key #

With this authentication method, the server will exchange an Access Key for a Bearer Token internally.

gRPC #

You can authenticate to the gRPC endpoint by supplying a key field in the Metadata. The value of this field should be the Application access key.

Example (Go):

md := metadata.Pairs(
  "key", "ttn-account-v2.n4BAoKOGuK2hj7MXg_OVtpLO0BTJI8lLzt66UsvTlUvZPsi6FADOptnmSH3e3PuQzbLLEUhXxYhkxr34xyUqBQ",
)
ctx := metadata.NewOutgoingContext(context.Background(), md)

HTTP #

For HTTP Endpoints, you should supply the Authorization header: Authorization: Key <key>.

Example:

Authorization: Key ttn-account-v2.n4BAoKOGuK2hj7MXg_OVtpLO0BTJI8lLzt66UsvTlUvZPsi6FADOptnmSH3e3PuQzbLLEUhXxYhkxr34xyUqBQ