2.3. Give new API Key access to KPN Things

You need to give your newly created API Key access to the KPN Things service before you can use it. For this, click on Services and roles (#1 in the screenshot), and click on Add a service (#2 in the screenshot).

✨ Early access feature! API access to KPN Things is currently in beta! We try to notify users in advance about breaking changes, but we cannot guarantee continuity of this service just yet.

How Things API access works

The API Key

To access the KPN Things APIs you need an API Key. And these API Keys are managed by GRIP, the identify management platform of KPN. Your user account used to access the KPN Things Portal is also managed by GRIP. Learn more about the account you use to access KPN Things.

In GRIP there are API Keys. These are separate entities in a tenant (a customer environment). That means an API Key is not user bound, but it is rather a separate entity.

The access token

Each time you want to access the KPN Things APIs, you need to request an access token from the GRIP API using your API Key. This access token you get is valid for one hour, and can be used as a bearer token to access KPN Things APIs directly.

That means, for each API call you do to KPN Things, you need to add the following Authorization header:

Authorization: Bearer {accessToken}

There is no refresh token. To regain access after your access token has expired, just request another access token through the GRIP API.

You can find more information about the access method we employ here on the Grip Knowledge Base website, linked below. The method is called Machine authentication.

KPN Grip | Identity management by KPN

Getting started

This is a step-by-step explanation to find all required information needed for requesting an access token from GRIP.

Value	Description
GRIP Tenant ID	The unique identifier of your GRIP environment.
Application ID	The ID of the service you want to access, being KPN Things. Used as audience in your client credentials request. For KPN Things it is this: 4dc82561-f65f-523g-dek9-6c79ec314f02
Client ID	The API Key's ID
Client Secret	The API Key's Secret key

1. Find your GRIP Tenant ID in the Things Portal

In the KPN Things Portal, visit the Customer detail page by clicking on your name in the top right and then clicking "Customer Details" in the overflow menu. On the following page, you will find your GRIP Tenant ID.

2. Create your API Key and API Key's Secret in GRIP

It is best practice to create individual API Keys for each instance that will access the KPN Things APIs.

Log into the GRIP Portal as an administrator.

• If you have a KPN Developer account, you will be an administrator in the GRIP Portal.

• If you have a MijnKPN Zakelijk account, you should ask your local administrator for access.

Learn more about the account you use to access KPN Things.

Grip

2.1. Go to API Key management

To create API Keys, you need to be an administrator in the GRIP Portal.

Then, open the Admin panel using the role drop down (#1 in the screenshot), click on Identity in the side menu (#2 in the screenshot) and click on API keys (#3 in the screenshot). This brings you to the API Key management page. Now, click Add to add a new API Key (#4 in the screenshot).

2.2. Create new API Key

In the following pop-up, give your new API Key a Display name and a Description. Then click Add to create your new API Key.

2.3. Give new API Key access to KPN Things

You need to give your newly created API Key access to the KPN Things service before you can use it. Click on Services and roles (#1 in the screenshot), and click on Add a service (#2 in the screenshot).

A modal will open. Click on the checkbox next to KPN Things (#1 in the screenshot) and hit Add (#2 in the screenshot).

Click on the KPN Things service and select the desired role and access level for your API key:

Then, click Save to finally give your API Key access to KPN Things.

2.4. Fetch credentials of new API Key

Now, when you click back on General information, you will see the ID and Secret key of your new API Key.

Perform Things API calls

Don't want to manually implement the API calls? Use our published Postman collection to quickly generate code snippets for all published API calls!

Request access token through GRIP API

POST https://auth.grip-on-it.com/v2/{tenantId}/oidc/idp/c1/token

With this request, you obtain the access token you use to access the KPN Things API's.

Headers

Name	Type	Description
Content-Type	string	application/json; charset=utf-8

Request Body

Name	Type	Description
grant_type	string	client_credentials
audience	string	The Application ID (see above)
client_id	string	The API Key's ID
client_secret	string	The API Key's Secret key

200 The access_token in the response can be used as bearer token to access KPN Things API's.

{
  "access_token": "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expires_in": 3600
}

Error	Solution
Feature user does not exist anymore.	You should check your API Key ID or Secret, they may be incorrect.
Feature service does not exist anymore.	You should add the KPN Things Portal service to your API Key through the GRIP Portal.
SAML request error: "idpId" not found.	Your tenantId (which is a path variable) is incorrect.

More information in the GRIP Knowledge Base (documentation).

List devices

GET https://api.kpnthings.com/api/devices

Now you have an access token, execute the following call to list your Devices

Query Parameters

Name	Type	Description
currentPage	number	0
pageSize	number	20
search	string	(case sensitive partial string search)
sortBy	string	name
sortOrder	string	ASC

Headers

Name	Type	Description
Authorization	string	Bearer {accessToken}
Accept	string	application/vnd.kpnthings.device.v1.response+json

200 A paged list of all your Devices.

{
    "content": [
        {
            "uuid": "xxxxxx",
            "name": "My first own device",
            "description": "",
            "metadata": null,
            "deviceSpecificationUUID": "d2723e99-1fe4-4d60-9b6d-8061f7414b24",
            "barcode": null
        },
        ...
    ],
    "last": true,
    "totalPages": 1,
    "totalElements": 2,
    "sort": [
        {
            "direction": "ASC",
            "property": "name",
            "ignoreCase": false,
            "nullHandling": "NATIVE",
            "ascending": true,
            "descending": false
        }
    ],
    "first": true,
    "numberOfElements": 2,
    "size": 20,
    "number": 0
}

Response codes

Code	Description
🟢 200 OK	Your request was correct.
🟢 201 Created	You created an object with your request.
🟢 204 No Content	Your request was correct, but there is no information to return, for instance after deleting an object.
🟡 302 Found	Your access token is incorrect or does not have access to KPN Things. Please check your API Key in GRIP.
🔴 400 Bad Request	Something in your request is not correctly formatted. For instance your body structure, your accept header or a query parameter.
🔴 403 Forbidden	Your access token is correct, but you do not have the authorization to access that resource.

Send downlink to device

POST https://api.kpnthings.com/api/actuator/downlinks

Body: [{"bn":"urn:dev:DEVEUI:{devEUI}:", "n":"payloadHex", "vs": "{payload}"}]

Query Parameters

Name	Type	Description
externalReference	string	Optional reference for you to choose
port	integer	LoRa FPort to send data on

Headers

Name	Type	Description
Accept	string	application/vnd.kpnthings.actuator.v1.response+json
Content-Type	string	application/json

Full documentation of KPN Things APIs

Currently the APIs of KPN Things are documented using Postman. Postman is an easy to use API development tool.

Postman API Collection

https://www.getpostman.com/collections/46072fa86a8844c3d63ewww.getpostman.com

Postman environment variables

To get the Postman collection working, you need to create a Postman environment with the following variables:

Variable	Value
gripBaseUrl	https://auth.grip-on-it.com
tenantId	Your grip tenant id
applicationId	4dc82561-f65f-523g-dek9-6c79ec314f02
keyId	Your key id
keySecret	Your key secret
baseUrl	https://api.kpnthings.com

API access to customer environments as a reseller

When you are a reseller of KPN Things, you can manage the KPN Things environments of your own customers on their behalf using the KPN Things APIs. To do so, you should indicate which API calls are meant to operate within the context of a specific customer by specifying the KPN-Things-Security-Context header:

KPN-Things-Security-Context: client:uuid:{{customerID}}

The value of {{customerID}} is the UUID identifying the customer for whom you intend to manage their KPN Things environment.

When you specify the KPN-Things-Security-Context header, KPN Things will validate the syntax and check that your own account is a reseller of the given {{customerID}}. If either check fails, your API call will be denied. Note that you can specify only a single KPN-Things-Security-Context header for each API call: multiple values are not supported.

💎 Add-on feature

To get started as a reseller and set up environments for customers of your own within KPN Things, you require the Customer Management add-on feature.

⚠️Deprecated: performing API call in sub-customer environment

This API is deprecated: use the KPN-Things-Security-Contextheader instead.

💎 Add-on feature This feature is only available if you have the add-on feature Customer Management.

If you have Customer Management in your account, you can manage Things accounts for your own customers. These customers of you, let's call them sub-customers, have their own customer account in KPN Things. But you have access rights with your API Key to perform actions in their account.

The principle

To perform an API call in a sub-customer environment, there are two requirements:

1. You should have requested the access rights to the individual sub-customer environment

2. For all API calls you perform, you should add the following HTTP header:

x-client-id: {{customerID}}

Step 1: Request access rights

This only has to be one once per API Key per sub-customer.

1. Find the Customer ID from the sub-customer you want to perform an action on. You can use the All Customers page to search in your Customers and then open the Customer details page of the concerning Customer to find its Customer ID.
2. Perform the Request KPN Things access token through GRIP API call.

3. Perform the following API call:

⚠️Deprecated: request access rights to a sub-customer

This API is deprecated: use the KPN-Things-Security-Contextheader instead.

GET https://api.kpnthings.com/api/v1/lifecycle/clients/:clientId/context-switch

Path Parameters

Name	Type	Description
clientId	string	Customer ID of your sub-customer

Headers

Name	Type	Description
Content-Type	string	application/json
Accept	string	application/json

Step 2: Perform API call in sub-customer environment

Now you have access rights to the sub-customer environment with your API key. Now you can perform any API call you have the rights for in the sub-customer environment by simply adding the x-client-id header to the API call when you execute it.

SSL certificate information

The SSL server certificates of KPN Things and GRIP are provided by the new PKI Overheid CA hierarchy. On kpn.com you can learn more about the KPN certificates.

If required for your security implementation, all certificate files of the chain can be downloaded here:

• Root: Staat der Nederlanden EV Root CA
• Intermediate: Staat der Nederlanden Domein Server CA 2020
• Intermediate: KPN PKIoverheid Server CA 2020