

Twitter from the command line in Python using OAuth - step-by-step howto - jmillerinc
http://jmillerinc.com/2010/05/31/twitter-from-the-command-line-in-python-using-oauth

======
ck2
After setting up Twitter which uses OAuth 1.0, try Facebook's OAuth 2.0 - it's
amazingly easy in comparison since it doesn't use secrets, simply relying on
HTTPS's SSL encryption instead.

<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/>

Soooo much easier.

------
pilif
This just goes to show how badly suited OAuth is for desktop applications:
Basically, what ever you do, you will need to direct your users over to a
browser (or embed one) and they'll have to deal with strange "passcodes" or
whatever you want to call it.

This is much more difficult for a user to understand ("why can I give twitter
my password, but in this client here, I have to do this strange dance? What am
I supposed to do now?").

In most of the client apps, the issue of having to enter your password is a
non-issue as there's no need for a third-party to know it.

In the case of desktop apps, IMHO, OAuth does nothing but makes the lives of
both client developers and users harder.

~~~
hboon
There's XAuth which helps with this issue so that opening a browser is not
needed.

~~~
semanticist
Yes, but you need to ask Twitter nicely to see if they'll let you use it.

~~~
hboon
It looks like they'll grant it if you have a mobile app. (I do and they did).

------
paulgb
Thanks Jeff, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I found out about
twitter killing basic auth today, but all the documentation seems to assume
you have a web app. I just run a simple RSS scraper to twitter feed script on
a cron job, so this is helpful.

~~~
mshafrir
Once I have generated an ACCESS_KEY and ACCESS_SECRET, when will they expire?
Is there any way to programmatically grant/approve OAuth access so that
expired access key and access secret can be generated as needed?

~~~
jmillerinc
Twitter says they "do not currently expire access tokens."
<http://apiwiki.twitter.com/OAuth-FAQ>

Who knows what they will do in the future.

I don't know of any easy way to programatically grant OAuth access.

------
jot
Twitter have released a nice curl-like tool for using OAuth on the command
line, it's called twurl:

<http://github.com/marcel/twurl>

------
cmelbye
I wonder how difficult it would be to implement xAuth. Presumably, the
configuration for username/password could be left intact because xAuth is
performed by giving the username/password.

