OAuth2 Quick Start Example

This is a stripped down, quick start guide to getting a script to make OAuth2 API requests. If you want more details, see the full OAuth2 login docs.

Testing Locally

All of the steps below work when testing against a local version of reddit with a few simple changes.

1. Create the app on your server.
2. Replace www.reddit.com or oauth.reddit.com with reddit.local if you are running the app with Vagrant or whatever you normally use to point to your local server.
3. Send the -k flag with all curl commands.

First Steps

Go to your app preferences. Click the "Create app" or "Create another app" button. Fill out the form like so:

• name: My Example App
• App type: Choose the script option
• description: You can leave this blank
• about url: You can leave this blank
• redirect url: http://www.example.com/unused/redirect/uri (We won't be using this as a redirect)

Note: These examples will only work for script type apps, which will ONLY have access to accounts registered as "developers" of the app and require the application to know the user's password. Read more about app types.

Hit the "create app" button. Make note of the client ID and client secret. For the rest of this page, it will be assumed that:

• Your username is: reddit_bot
• Your password is: snoo
• Your app's client ID is: p-jcoLKBynTLew
• Your app's client secret is: gko_LXELoV07ZBNUXrvWZfzE3aI

Note: You should NEVER post your client secret (or your reddit password) in public. If you create a bot, you should take steps to ensure that the bot's password and the app's client secret are secured against digital theft. The client IDs, secrets, tokens and passwords used here are, obviously, fake and invalid.

Curl Example

Request a token. Notice that for acquiring a token, requests are made to https://www.reddit.com

reddit@reddit-VirtualBox:~$ curl -X POST -d 'grant_type=password&username=reddit_bot&password=snoo' --user 'p-jcoLKBynTLew:gko_LXELoV07ZBNUXrvWZfzE3aI' https://www.reddit.com/api/v1/access_token
{
    "access_token": "J1qK1c18UUGJFAzz9xnH56584l4", 
    "expires_in": 3600, 
    "scope": "*", 
    "token_type": "bearer"
}

Use the token to get identity information. Notice that for using the token, requests are made to https://oauth.reddit.com.

reddit@reddit-VirtualBox:~$ curl -H "Authorization: bearer J1qK1c18UUGJFAzz9xnH56584l4" -A "ChangeMeClient/0.1 by YourUsername" https://oauth.reddit.com/api/v1/me
{
    "comment_karma": 0, 
    "created": 1389649907.0, 
    "created_utc": 1389649907.0, 
    "has_mail": false, 
    "has_mod_mail": false, 
    "has_verified_email": null, 
    "id": "1", 
    "is_gold": false, 
    "is_mod": true, 
    "link_karma": 1, 
    "name": "reddit_bot", 
    "over_18": true
}

That's all there is to it!

Python example

This example uses the Python requests library. An IPython prompt is shown instead of the standard python prompt.

Request a token. Notice that for acquiring a token, requests are made to https://www.reddit.com.

In [1]: import requests
In [2]: import requests.auth
In [3]: client_auth = requests.auth.HTTPBasicAuth('p-jcoLKBynTLew', 'gko_LXELoV07ZBNUXrvWZfzE3aI')
In [4]: post_data = {"grant_type": "password", "username": "reddit_bot", "password": "snoo"}
In [5]: headers = {"User-Agent": "ChangeMeClient/0.1 by YourUsername"}
In [6]: response = requests.post("https://www.reddit.com/api/v1/access_token", auth=client_auth, data=post_data, headers=headers)
In [7]: response.json()
Out[7]: 
{u'access_token': u'fhTdafZI-0ClEzzYORfBSCR7x3M',
 u'expires_in': 3600,
 u'scope': u'*',
 u'token_type': u'bearer'}

Use the token. Notice that for using the token, requests are made to https://oauth.reddit.com.

In [8]: headers = {"Authorization": "bearer fhTdafZI-0ClEzzYORfBSCR7x3M", "User-Agent": "ChangeMeClient/0.1 by YourUsername"}
In [9]: response = requests.get("https://oauth.reddit.com/api/v1/me", headers=headers)
In [10]: response.json()
Out[10]: 
{u'comment_karma': 0,
 u'created': 1389649907.0,
 u'created_utc': 1389649907.0,
 u'has_mail': False,
 u'has_mod_mail': False,
 u'has_verified_email': None,
 u'id': u'1',
 u'is_gold': False,
 u'is_mod': True,
 u'link_karma': 1,
 u'name': u'reddit_bot',
 u'over_18': True}