Back
May 12, 2010

Twitter API, OAuth and decorators

In my current project I had a task to use twitter API. Twitter uses OAuth for authentication, which is pretty dreary. To avoid fiddling with it all the time, I've moved authentication to decorator, now it looks like this:

@twitter_api
def tweet_hello(request, api):
    api.update_status('hello')
# ...

Decorator checks if key is available, and, if needed - initiates authentication. User is redirected to twitter, grants permission and is redirected back to site, to the same place where he left off. If key is available - nothing happens, just view is launched as usual.

It's convenient that there's no need for additional twitter settings in user profile.

tweepy is used as an API wrapper.

def twitter_api(view):
    def wrapped(request, args, *kwargs):
        callback_url = absolute_url(oauth_endpoint)
        auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, callback_url)

        if 'twitter_access_token' in request.session:
            key, secret =     request.session['twitter_access_token']
            auth.set_access_token(key, secret)
            return view(request, api=tweepy.API(auth), *args, **kwargs)

        request.session['twitter_action'] = request.path
        redirect_url = auth.get_authorization_url()
        request.session['twitter_request_token'] = (auth.request_token.key, auth.request_token.secret)
        return redirect(redirect_url)

    return wrapped


def oauth_endpoint(request):
    callback_url = absolute_url(oauth_endpoint)
    auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, callback_url)
    key, secret = request.session.pop('twitter_request_token')
    auth.set_request_token(key, secret)
    verifier = request.REQUEST.get('oauth_verifier')
    auth.get_access_token(verifier)
    request.session['twitter_access_token'] = (auth.access_token.key, auth.access_token.secret)
    return redirect(request.session.pop('twitter_action'))
  • of course, you need to wrap everything in try..except blocks and process errors accordingly
  • absolute_url should return full url, with http://
  • apart from request.path you can also store POST and GET.
  • path can be passed as an argument to callback_url

Subscribe for the news and updates

More thoughts
Apr 15, 2024Technology
Lazy Promises in Node.js

Promise is a powerful tool in asynchronous programming that allows developers to call a time-consuming function and proceed with program execution without waiting for the function result.

May 5, 2023Technology
The best CSS trends for 2023

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) made its debut in 1996 and continue to be an indispensable and evolving component of web development. We will examine the most valuable recent and upcoming characteristics in CSS for this year.

Jul 13, 2022Technology
Prosemirror: Render node as react component

In this article I’m going to show how to declare custom prosemirror node, how to render it with toDom method and how improve that with custom NodeView using React component.

Jun 1, 2018Technology
Site search organization: basic concepts

Now it's time to get acquainted with Elasticsearch. This NoSQL database is used to store logs, analyze information and - most importantly - search.

May 26, 2017Technology
Tutorial: Django User Registration and Authentication

In this beginners friends article I'll explain how to make authentication with Google account on your Django site and how to make authentication for you REST API.

Jan 12, 2017Technology
Making Custom Report Tables Using AngularJS and Django

In this article I will tell you how to create an interactive interface with a widely customized visual look and different filtering to view reports.