Linkedin

Ruby-wrapper for LinkedIn API version 2 with Oauth2 support.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'linkedin-ruby'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install linkedin-ruby

Usage

Step 1: Register your application with LinkedIn. They will give you a Client ID (aka API Key) and a Client Secret (aka Secret Key)

Step 2: Use your Client ID and Client Secret to obtain an Access Token from some user.

Step 3: Use an Access Token to query the API.

api = LinkedIn::API.new(access_token)
me = api.profile

Step 1: Register your Application

You first need to create and register an application with LinkedIn here.

You will not be able to use any part of the API without registering first.

Once you have registered you will need to take note of a few key items on your Application Details page.

1. API Key - We refer to this as your client id or client_id
2. Secret Key - We refer to this as your client secret or client_secret
3. Default Scope - This is the set of permissions you request from users when they connect to your app. If you want to set this on a request-by-request basis, you can use the scope option with the auth_code_url method.
4. OAuth 2.0 Redirect URLs - For security reasons, the url you enter in this box must exactly match the redirect_uri you use in this gem.

You do NOT need OAuth User Token nor OAuth User Secret. That is for OAuth 1.0. This gem is for OAuth 2.0.

Step 2: Getting An Access Token

All LinkedIn API requests must be made in the context of an access token. The access token encodes what LinkedIn information your AwesomeApp® can gather on behalf of "John Doe".

There are a few different ways to get an access token from a user.

1. You can use LinkedIn's Javascript API to authenticate on the front-end and then pass the access token to the backend via this procedure.

2. If you use OmniAuth, I would recommend looking at decioferreira/omniauth-linkedin-oauth2 to help automate authentication.

3. You can do it manually using this linkedin-ruby gem and the steps below.

Here is how to get an access token using this linkedin-ruby gem:

Step 2A: Configuration

You will need to configure the following items:

1. Your client id (aka API Key)
2. Your client secret (aka Secret Key)
3. Your redirect uri. On LinkedIn's website you must input a list of valid redirect URIs. If you use the same one each time, you can set it in the LinkedIn.configure block. If your redirect uris change depending on business logic, you can pass it into the auth_code_url method.

# It's best practice to keep secret credentials out of source code.
# You can, of course, hardcode dev keys or directly pass them in as the
# first two arguments of LinkedIn::OAuth2.new
LinkedIn.configure do |config|
  config.client_id     = ENV["LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID"]
  config.client_secret = ENV["LINKEDIN_CLIENT_SECRET"]

  # This must exactly match the redirect URI you set on your application's
  # settings page. If your redirect_uri is dynamic, pass it into
  # `auth_code_url` instead.
  config.redirect_uri  = "https://example.io/linkedin/oauth2"
end

Step 2B: Get Auth Code URL

oauth = LinkedIn::OAuth2.new

url = oauth.auth_code_url

Step 2C: User Sign In

You must now load url from Step 2B in a browser. It will pull up the LinkedIn sign in box. Once LinkedIn user credentials are entered, the box will close and redirect to your redirect url, passing along with it the OAuth code as the code GET param.

Be sure to read the extended documentation around the LinkedIn::OAuth2 module for more options you can set.

Note: The OAuth code only lasts for ~20 seconds!

Step 2D: Get Access Token

code = "THE_OAUTH_CODE_LINKEDIN_GAVE_ME"

access_token = oauth.get_access_token(code)

Now that you have an access token, you can use it to query the API.

The LinkedIn::OAuth2 inherits from intreda/oauth2's OAuth2::Client class. See that gem's documentation for more usage examples.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/linkedin-ruby. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Linkedin project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.