Well there seems to be quite a bit of confusion on this topic and I am struggling to get a clear answer, so here is my question...
I am using the serverside flow to obtain access tokens for my web app, I previously used offline_access which is now being depreciated so I need a way to refresh the token in the following situations:
1) User changes FB password
2) Token expires naturally
My app posts results to users FB walls so the refresh needs to be done automatically by our server (no cookies or OAuth dialogs)
I thought I could try to use the new endpoint described here
http://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/
, with the following piece of code (Java):
public static String refreshFBAccessToken(String existingAccessToken)
throws Exception{
//Currently not working
String refreshUrl = "https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id="+FacebookApp.appId+"
&client_secret="+FacebookApp.appSecret+"
&grant_type=fb_exchange_token
&fb_exchange_token="+existingAccessToken;
URL url = new URL(refreshUrl);
URI uri = new URI(url.getProtocol(), url.getHost(), url.getPath(),
url.getQuery(), null);
String result = readURL(uri.toURL());
String[] resultSplited = result.split("&");
return resultSplited[0].split("=")[1];
}
But this doesnt seem to work (I get a response 400), and when I re-read the documentation it seems this endpoint is used for tokens obtained using the client-side flow only...
So what about the serverside flow....?
Can someone tell me if the approach above is correct or there is another way?
Many thanks
From what I understand there is no server side flow for refreshing tokens.
The refresh token call needs to include the response of the user authentication process which is a short lived token.
You will need to include the refresh token process as part of the user login flow or if this doesn't work for your setup you will need to email the user asking them to come back!
I dont know java but syntax is very much like C#, so I can say,you are doing everything right.
But I doubt what does this function readURL do ?
If it works like get_file_contents() of php (i.e. if it does an HTTP get) , I guess thats not a right way to do .
Based on my experience on google's refresh token method, I think you should do an HTTP POST instead of HTTP GET to given url.
Related
I have to create an webpage where i need to show all the events from the past or upcoming ones from an facebook page. I have to retrive the title, description, image, time and place of every single one and make a box with it.
After that, i have to retrive all the interested people.
I'm a beginner trying to make big things! Thank you very much.
This isnt a simple problem - I have just done this so will give you a start.
You need to use Facebooks Graph API to get the data, you will need to read up on the Graph API and how to use it. Documentation can be found here. Its worth noting due to a security breach the API isn't offering all of its services to new developers currently but you can get most - read about this here.
You can query the API using any language but I suggest do it with python and use the requests module. Alternatively you could use this SDK which makes things a lot easier, trust me! With the SDK you need to get a user access token which you can get from here.
SDK
With the SDK its possible to do this
import facebook
graph = facebook.GraphAPI(access_token="your_token", version="2.12")
event = graph.get_object(id='event_id',
fields='attending_count,declined_count')
print(event['attending_count'])
print(event['declined_count'])
You can add more fields to the fields list. However you can use any language you choose to request the data, as you can just construct your own URL's.
Graph API & Requests
This is how I did it in python using requests to query the API.
import requests, json
#Make a requests session to fetch data from URL's
session = requests.Session()
session.mount('https://', requests.adapters.HTTPAdapter(max_retries=10))
#API base URL
baseUrl = 'https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/'
#Fields you want to get
fields = ['id', 'name', 'start_time', 'end_time', 'description', 'place']
#replace CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET with ones from a facebook app (make one)
tokenPath= 'oauth/access_token?client_id={0}&client_secret={1}&&'\
'grant_type=client_credentials'.format(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET)
#Get the generated token
token = session.get(baseUrl + tokenPath).json()['access_token']
event = session.get(baseUrl, params={
"ids": "event_id",
"fields": ",".join(fields),
"access_token": token,
}
).json()
print(event["name"])
print(event["place"])
You can make a facebook app here which is where the CLIENT_ID & CLIENT_SECRET come from.
Why would you use URL requests and not the SDK?
Using the SDK the generated user access tokens expire every day, its possible to extend them but only for 60 days. If you want to use the SDK it has a method built in which allows you to extend the token, in order to extend the token you also need to create a facebook app. Its also possible to extend tokens using this website, though I cant vouch for its security - it could potentially access and exploit your data.
To extend the token with SDK:
import facebook
graph = facebook.GraphAPI(user_access_short_lived_token)
extended_token = graph.extend_access_token(app_id, app_secret)
print(extended_token)
Using the URL approach, you create a client access token at runtime (read about user access token vs client access token here) and the token is valid so long as your app is active. So if you are going to use this a lot or want to create it and not have to change/extend tokens then use the URL approach.
Hope this gets you started.
I'm trying to use my generated App Access Token with requests to the Graph API, but for some unknown reason it simply will not work. I always get the dreaded Invalid OAuth access token signature error.
Now, let me clarify: I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing. I did get it to work with a different FB app. I used the /oauth/access_token call to generate the App Access Token, and I can use that Token successfully in further graph calls for that FB app.
But when I try it for my new FB application, it fails. This is the Rails snippet:
app_access_token = URI.escape(ENV["FACEBOOK_APP_ACCESS_TOKEN"])
url = "https://graph.facebook.com/debug_token?input_token=#{user_access_token}&access_token=#{app_access_token}"
response = HTTParty.get(url)
I've also tried not-encoding the token; as expected, it doesn't work (and shouldn't).
I've double- and triple-checked my App ID and App Secret, and re-ran the generation (via curl), and I think it's all correct and copy/pasted without error. The only possibly-notable difference between the generated token of my old app and that of my new one is that the latter has a hyphen in it. Is that relevant?
I am currently working around this by using <App ID>|<App Secret> in place of the generated token, but I'd really like to get back to doing it the right way.
Argh! It turns out that I had a few extra characters that somehow got attached to the end of my generated token!
I don't know how those got there, but that was the problem. Just dumb old human error.
EDIT: Oh my god, every Facebook developer should know this page:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/accesstoken/
Why isn't that linked from the docs about the access token? It would have saved me so much time and probably prevented my mistake!
I was trying out the new enhanced revocable sessions in Parse on my Android app. It works well when logging in or signing up via email password or facebook but doesn't work well for custom authentication, e.g. google+.
I'm currently logging in the user using the cloud code which also creates the new user when signing up. This does not create a new Session object, that means the new enhanced sessions are not used and it still uses the legacy sessions.
I pass the session token back to client where using the become method the user logs in but it's the legacy sessions.
This feels like the feature is not complete but I would really like to move to the new enhanced sessions with my app. Has anyone worked with them yet? Are there any workarounds using the REST API or by creating the sessions manually and handling them manually? I looked into the JS API but it says it's only read only.
Here's the Blog post on Enhanced Sessions.
Where should I go next?
Yes, I found a solution but it's a workaround, works for my case because I don't support signing up with user/password.
Basically, the solution (cloud code) in semi pseudo-code is:
Fetch the user with master key
Check if user.getSessionToken() has value
if it has, return the session token and do a user.become() in the client as usual
if it's not, here the workaround, do the following:
yourPreviousPromiseInOrderToChainThem.then(function(user)
password = new Buffer(24);
_.times(24, function(i) {
password.set(i, _.random(0, 255));
});
password = password.toString('base64')
user.setPassword(password);
return user.save();
}).then(function(user) {
return Parse.User.logIn(user.get('username'), password)
}).then(function(user) {
var sessionToken = user.getSessionToken();
// Return the session token to the client as you've been doing with legacy sessions
})
That means, I'm changing the user password each time in order to make a remote login and, of course, I know thist can't be applied to all cases, it's enough for app because I don't support login with user/password (only third party logins) but I understand that maybe it's not for all cases.
I got the idea from this official Parse example.
I don't like this solution because I think is not a workaround, it's a mega hack but I think there is no other way to do it currently (either Parse.com or Parse-Server)
If you find other workaround, please, share it :)
I am working on a library in LUA for an ipad app called Codea. I'm trying to figure out to use OAuth for GitHub Gists. Only part that i can not figure out is how to get an Auth token via code. I used curl in terminal to get myself a token but this seems to be to much work for other users.
I've read through the github api docs multiple times but I cant figure out how to get a Token programmatically. I've tried to duplicate the method I've used to GET and POST gists but it does not seem to work. I'm not sure how to pass the username and password.
I'm creating a table with the needed params then encoding it in json. Everything I try gets a 404 error or 500 error. Thank you all in advance.
local url = "https://api.github.com/authorizations"
local d = {}
d.scopes = {"gist"}
d.note = "AutoGist Codea"
projectAuth = json.encode(d)
opts = { data = projectAuth }
opts.method = "POST"
opts.headers = {Authorization = "basic " .."username:password"}
http.request(url,successCallback,failedCallback,opts)
Scopes are coming, but only in Q4 2013.
See "OAuth changes coming" (October 2013, by Tim Cleam - tclem):
Starting today, we are returning granted scopes as part of the access_token response.
For example, if you are making a POST with the application/json mime-type you’ll see an additional field for the granted scopes.
{
"access_token":"e72e16c7e42f292c6912e7710c838347ae178b4a",
"scope":"repo,gist",
"token_type":"bearer"
}
Right now, these scopes will be identical to what you requested, but we are moving towards a feature set that will allow GitHub users to edit their scopes, effectively granting your application less access than you originally requested.
You should be aware of this possibility and adjust your application behavior accordingly.
Some things to watch out for and keep in mind:
Most third party applications using GitHub OAuth to identify users have the best success in adoption by starting out with a request for the minimum access that the application can possibly get away with.
Something like no scopes or just user:email is very sane.
It is important to handle the error cases where a users chooses to grant you less access than you originally requested.
Now that we are surfacing the granted scopes on the access_token response, applications can warn or otherwise communicate with their users that they will see reduced functionality or be unable to perform some actions.
Applications can always send users back through the flow again to get additional permission, but don’t forget that users can always say no.
I'm using the Javascript SDK inside a node.js (Express) App.
Connecting Users works fine, but the connection does not persist between page reloads.
Is this the default behaviour, or is the User supposed to stay connected in new requests?
Do I have to use OAuth token authentication and if so, how can this be done with the JS-SDK?
Inside the "Permission"-Popup, Users are already logged in with soundlcoud, though.
(just have to click the "connect" button each time)
Figured I'd share my answer for those who are unsatisfied with the current answers for automated oauth:
Retrieving access_token:
I had to define get and set cookie functions and then I use the functions to set and retrieve a function holding the access token. I'm not going to give these functions for conciseness but you can easily find them with a google search. I then use this line of code to get the SC access token (once the user has authenticated for the first time)
SC.accessToken()
Setting token:
So this is kind of just an elephant in the room in my opinion that for some reason no one has mentioned. How in the **** do you connect w/ SC using the access token? Do you set it as oauth param? On each call pass it? Well, after experimenting with putting the parameter in every single place I could think, I found out you have to do something like this:
SC.initialize({
client_id: '[removed for security reasons]',
client_secret: '[removed for security reasons]',
redirect_uri: '[removed for security reasons]',
access_token: getCookie("sc_lm2"),
scope: 'non-expiring'
});
//Where "sc_lm2" is the name of my cookie
Hope the helps! Took me a while to figure this out for such a simple thing
EDIT
Using PHP and Wordpress:
$json = wp_remote_get("http://api.soundcloud.com/users/[user_id]/tracks.json?client_id=[client_id]");
$soundcloudData = json_decode($json['body'],true);
(substitue cURL functionality if you're not using Wordpress). #krafty I assume you would just change the endpoint from "/tracks" to "/users" but I can't say I have ever really needed to grab anything but tracks using the Soundcloud API. Hope this helps, though I'm not sure I fully understand what it is that you are trying to accomplish (or rather, how exactly you're going about it) - are you trying to allow user logins? If you want to explain fully what you're trying to accomplish and the steps you're taking I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Yep, this is the way to do it, officially. :)
For the Next SoundCloud site, we store the token in localStorage (until the user logs out, of course). In each AJAX request to the API from the front end, we put the oauth token in a request header:
jqXHR.setRequestHeader('Authorization', 'OAuth ' + the_oauth_token);