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 27, 2022TechnologyBusiness
How to Choose the Best Javascript Framework: Comparison of the Top Javascript Frameworks

In our article, you will find the best JavaScript framework comparison so that you know for sure how to choose the right one for your project.

May 10, 2018Technology
How to Build a Cloud-Based Leads Management System for Universities

Lead management is an important part of the marketing strategy of every company of any size. Besides automating various business processes, privately-held organizations should consider implementing an IT solution that would help them manage their leads. So, how should you make a web-based leads management system for a University in order to significantly increase sales?

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.

Dec 1, 2016Technology
How to Use Django & PostgreSQL for Full Text Search

For any project there may be a need to use a database full-text search. We expect high speed and relevant results from this search. When we face such problem, we usually think about Solr, ElasticSearch, Sphinx, AWS CloudSearch, etc. But in this article we will talk about PostgreSQL. Starting from version 8.3, a full-text search support in PostgreSQL is available. Let's look at how it is implemented in the DBMS itself.

Sep 23, 2010Technology
Dynamic class generation, QuerySetManager and use_for_related_fields

It appears that not everyone knows that in python you can create classes dynamically without metaclasses. I'll show an example of how to do it.So we've learned how to use custom QuerySet to chain requests:Article.objects.old().public()Now we need to make it work for related objects:user.articles.old().public()This is done using use_for_related_fields, but it needs a little trick.

Feb 18, 2010Technology
User profiles with inheritance in Django

Usually users' profiles are stored in single model. When there are multiple user types, separation is made by some field like user_type.Situation is a little more complicated when different data is needed for each user type.In this article I'll describe how I solve this task.