Protocols

Before you can use HelseID, you will need knowledge of the protocols that HelseID is built upon. These are

• OAuth 2.0: an industry standard protocol for authorization of HTTP clients, for instance in use against a REST API
• OpenID Connect: an identity layer on top of OAuth 2.0, making it easy to authenticate a user

Logging on a user

If your aim is to log on a user (person) with the use of HelseID, you will need to have knowledge about OpenID Connect. You can find a simple introduction of this here. Before you start development, you should have knowledge to the core protocol, and also how the core protocol is structured, and how you can use it for troubleshooting.

Get access to, or develop an API

If you need access to, or want to develop an API that is secured by HelseID, you will need to have knowledge of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. You can find a simple introduction to OAuth 2.0 at this page.

OAuth 2.0 is a rather expansive protocol, and it is hard to get a full overview of all its aspects. We reccomend that you have knowledge to the specification for OAuth 2.1, which, albeit still just in draft mode, gives a good description of the most important mechanisms used by HelseID.