OAuth consumer component for CakePHP

Purpose

An OAuth consumer component for CakePHP 2.x supporting OAuth 1.0 as defined in http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5849. For CakePHP 1.x, please checkout the cakephp_1.x branch and/or download the latest version for it.

Installation

• Copy the component and the OAuthConsumers folder to the Controller/Component folder of your application

Usage

For each API you want to use, you have to write a consumer class. This class is responsible to handle the consumer key and consumer secret you get from the API provider (for using the Twitter API, as in this example, you have to register your application at https://twitter.com/oauth).

The requirements for such a class are:

• its name must end with Consumer
• it must extend AbstractConsumer
• it must be placed in the OAuthConsumers folder

As you can see in the example below, a consumer class is pretty simple:

<?php
// Controller/Component/OAuthConsumers/TwitterConsumer.php
class TwitterConsumer extends AbstractConsumer {
  public function __construct() {
    parent::__construct('YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY', 'YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET');
  }
}

As usual in CakePHP, you have to add the component to the $components array of the controller(s) in which you want to use the component.

In the index method a request token is obtained and the user is redirected to Twitter to authorize the request token. Notice the first parameter passed to the getRequestToken method, it is the name (without Consumer) of the previously created consumer class and tells the component which credentials to use for the request.

In the callback method the request token is exchanged for an access token. Using this access token, a new status is posted to Twitter. Please note that in a real application, you would save the access token data in a database to avoid that the user has to get an access token over and over again.

<?php
// Controller/TwitterController.php
class TwitterController extends AppController {
  public $components = array('OAuthConsumer');

  public function index() {
    $requestToken = $this->OAuthConsumer->getRequestToken('Twitter', 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/twitter/callback');

    if ($requestToken) {
      $this->Session->write('twitter_request_token', $requestToken);
      $this->redirect('https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=' . $requestToken->key);
    } else {
      // an error occured when obtaining a request token
    }
  }

  public function callback() {
    $requestToken = $this->Session->read('twitter_request_token');
    $accessToken = $this->OAuthConsumer->getAccessToken('Twitter', 'https://api.twitter.com/oauth/access_token', $requestToken);

    if ($accessToken) {
      $this->OAuthConsumer->post('Twitter', $accessToken->key, $accessToken->secret, 'https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json', array('status' => 'hello world!'));
    }
    exit;
  }
}

Migration from CakePHP 1.x to CakePHP 2.x

If you are migrating your application to CakePHP 2.x, you have to make a few changes beside updating the component. First, you have to rename OauthConsumer to OAuthConsumer in the $components array and everywhere you are using the component. And second, you have to move all consumer classes to the new OAuthConsumers folder and camel-case the file names, i.e. twitter_consumer.php becomes TwitterConsumer.php.

Contact

If you have questions or feedback, feel free to contact me via Twitter (@dhofstet) or by email (daniel.hofstetter@42dh.com).

License

The OAuth consumer component is licensed under the MIT license.