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
Sep 8, 2023Technology
Smooth React virtual scroll with fixed rows/columns

One of our ongoing projects, Neptyne, introduces an Excel-like grid written in React. We used a library to apply virtual scroll to it, but we stumbled upon a problem with fixed rows and columns inside the grid. Here I would like to describe this problem, how it occurs, and how we handled it.

Nov 29, 2022Technology
React Performance Testing with Jest

One of the key requirements for modern UI is being performant. No matter how beautiful your app looks and what killer features it offers, it will frustrate your users if it clangs.

Sep 1, 2021TechnologyBusiness
Top 10 Web Development Frameworks in 2021 - 2022

We have reviewed the top web frameworks for server and client-side development and compared their pros and cons. Find out which one can be a great fit for your next project.

Jun 14, 2017Technology
How to Deploy a Django Application on Heroku?

In this article I'll show you how to deploy Django with Celery and Postgres to Heroku.

Apr 3, 2011Technology
Sprite cache invalidation

When we use css-sprites it's important to make browser cache them for longest period possible. On other hand, we need to refresh them when they are updated. This is especially visible when all icons are stored in single sprite. When it's outdated - entire site becomes ugly.

Oct 11, 2010Technology
Testing authentication in Django

In order to check if user is authentcated in test, you can run: