Accessing LinkedIn data via API using python (and authorisation in general)

Question

I'm trying to access LinkedIn data via API (I don't have an app, I just want to access company data - or see what can be accessed). There are other questions here on this topic, but most are out of date (using packagaes which precede LinkedIn's current authorisation process).

I followed the LinkedIn documentation on authorisation: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/oauth2

I created an application (using a nonsense website url as I do not have a website). This gave me a Client ID and Client Secret.

Using (out of date) stuff from LinkedIn (https://github.com/linkedin/api-get-started/blob/master/python/tutorial.py) I wrote:

import oauth2 as oauth
import urllib.parse as urlparse

consumer_key    =   'my client id e.g. sjd6ffdf6262d'
consumer_secret =   'my customer secret e.g. d77373hhfh'

request_token_url = 'https://api.linkedin.com/uas/oauth/requestToken'
access_token_url =  'https://api.linkedin.com/uas/oauth/accessToken'
authorize_url =     'https://api.linkedin.com/uas/oauth/authorize'

consumer = oauth.Consumer(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
client = oauth.Client(consumer)

resp,content = client.request(request_token_url, "POST")

request_token = dict(urlparse.parse_qsl(content))

clean_request_token = {}
for key in request_token.keys():
    clean_request_token[key.decode('ascii')] = request_token[key].decode('ascii')
request_token = clean_request_token

print ("Go to the following link in your browser:")
print ("%s?oauth_token=%s" % (authorize_url, request_token['oauth_token']

This link takes me to a website where I 'give permission', and am then shown a pin code. Using this pin (called oauth_verifier here):

oauth_verifier = 12345
token = oauth.Token(request_token['oauth_token'],
request_token['oauth_token_secret'])
token.set_verifier(oauth_verifier)
client = oauth.Client(consumer, token)
content = client.request(access_token_url,"POST")

access_token = dict(urlparse.parse_qsl(content[1]))

clean_access_token = {}
for key in access_token.keys():
    clean_access_token[key.decode('ascii')] = access_token[key].decode('ascii')
access_token = clean_request_token

token = oauth.Token(key=access_token['oauth_token'],secret=access_token['oauth_token_secret'])

client = oauth.Client(consumer, token)

response = client.request("http://api.linkedin.com/v1/companies/barclays")

This response has a 401 code, due to "The token used in the OAuth request has been revoked."

The underlying problems are:

• I don't really get how APIs work, how they work with python, how authorisation works or how to know the api url I need.

In case relevant, I have experience web scraping (using requests plus beautiful soup to parse) but not with APIs.

Benny

Answer 1

I eventually worked it out, posting here in case anyone comes this way. Before you invest time, I also found out that the freely available API now only allows you to access your own profile or company page. So you can write an app that allows a user to post to their own page, but you can't write something to grab data. See here:

LinkedIn API unable to view _any_ company profile

Anyway, to get the limited API working, you need to:

• Create a LinkedIn account, create an application and add a redirect URL to your application page (I used http://localhost:8000). This doc says how to set up the app: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/oauth2

• Following the steps in the above link, but in python, you make a request to gain an "access code".

  html = requests.get("https://www.linkedin.com/oauth/v2/authorization", params = {'response_type':'code','client_id':client_id, 'redirect_uri':'http://localhost:8000', 'state':'somestring'})

• print html.url to get a huge link - click on it. You'll be asked to login and allow access, and then you'll be redirected to your redirect url. There'll be nothing there, but the url will have a long "access code" on the end of it. Pull this out and send it to LinkedIn with a Post request:

  token = requests.post('https://www.linkedin.com/oauth/v2/accessToken', data = {'grant_type':'authorization_code','code':access_code, 'redirect_uri':'http://localhost:8000', 'client_id':client_id,'client_secret':client_secret})

• token.content will contain an "access_token". This is what is needed to access the API. e.g. to access your own profile:

  headers = {'x-li-format': 'json', 'Content-Type': 'application/json'} params = {'oauth2_access_token': access_token}

  html = requests.get("https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~",headers=headers,params = params)

Hopefully that's useful to someone starting from scratch, the info is mostly out there but there are lots of assumed steps (like how to use the access token with requests).

Benny