PHP/Twitter oAuth - Automated Tweets

Question

Im using the following code to read to consumer_key and consumer_secret from config.php, pass it to twitter and retrieve some bits of information back from them.

What the script below attempts to do is 'cache' the request_token and request_secret. So in theory I should be able to reuse those details (all 4 of them to automatically tweet when required).

<?php

require_once('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');
require_once('config.php');

    $consumer_key = CONSUMER_KEY;
    $consumer_secret = CONSUMER_SECRET; 

if (isset($_GET["register"]))
{
    // If the "register" parameter is set we create a new TwitterOAuth object
    // and request a token

    /* Build TwitterOAuth object with client credentials. */

    $oauth = new TwitterOAuth(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET);
    $request = $oauth->getRequestToken();

    $request_token = $request["oauth_token"];
    $request_token_secret = $request["oauth_token_secret"];

    // At this I store the two request tokens somewhere.

    file_put_contents("request_token", $request_token);
    file_put_contents("request_token_secret", $request_token_secret);

    // Generate a request link and output it
    $request_link = $oauth->getAuthorizeURL($request);
    echo "Request here: <a href=\"" . $request_link . "\">" . $request_link . "</a>";
    die();
}
elseif (isset($_GET["validate"]))
{
    // This is the validation part. I read the stored request
    // tokens.

    $request_token = file_get_contents("request_token");
    $request_token_secret = file_get_contents("request_token_secret");

    // Initiate a new TwitterOAuth object. This time we provide them with more details:
    // The request token and the request token secret

    $oauth = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret,
        $request_token, $request_token_secret);

    // Ask Twitter for an access token (and an access token secret)
    $request = $oauth->getAccessToken();

    // There we go
    $access_token = $request['oauth_token'];
    $access_token_secret = $request['oauth_token_secret'];

    // Now store the two tokens into another file (or database or whatever):
    file_put_contents("access_token", $access_token);
    file_put_contents("access_token_secret", $access_token_secret);

    // Great! Now we've got the access tokens stored.
    // Let's verify credentials and output the username.
    // Note that this time we're passing TwitterOAuth the access tokens.


    $oauth = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret,
        $access_token, $access_token_secret);

    // Send an API request to verify credentials
    $credentials = $oauth->oAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/account/verify_credentials.xml', 'GET', array());

    // Parse the result (assuming you've got simplexml installed)
    $credentials = simplexml_load_string($credentials);

    var_dump($credentials);

    // And finaly output some text
    echo "Access token saved! Authorized as @" . $credentials->screen_name;
    die();
}
?>

When i run /?verify&oauth_token=0000000000000000 - It works however trying to resuse the generated tokens etc... I get a 401

Here is the last bit of code where I attempt to reuse the details from Twitter combined with my consumer_key and consumer_secret and get the 401:

require_once('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');
require_once('config.php');

// Read the access tokens
$access_token = file_get_contents("access_token");
$access_token_secret = file_get_contents("access_token_secret");

// Initiate a TwitterOAuth using those access tokens
$oauth = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_key_secret,
    $access_token, $access_token_secret);

// Post an update to Twitter via your application:
$oauth->OAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml',
    array('status' => "Hey! I'm posting via #OAuth!"), 'POST');

Not sure whats going wrong, are you able to cache the details or do i need to try something else?

Answer 1

You can't store the OAuth tokens in cache and to more than 1 request with it, as OAuth is there to help make the system secure, your "oauth_token" will contain some unique data, this token will only be able to make one call back to twitter, as soon as the call was made, that "oauth_token" is no longer valid, and the OAuth class should request a new "oauth_token", thus making sure that every call that was made is secure.

That is why you are getting an "401 unauthorized" error on the second time as the token is no longer valid.

twitter is still using OAuth v1 (v2 is still in the draft process even though facebook and google already implemented it in some parts) The image below describes the flow of the OAuth authentication. Hope it helps.

A while ago I used this to connect to twitter and send tweets, just note that it did make use of some Zend classes as the project was running on a zend server.

require_once 'Zend/Service/Twitter.php';
class Twitter {

    protected $_username = '<your_twitter_username>';
    protected $_token = '<your_twitter_access_token>';
    protected $_secret = '<your_twitter_access_token_secret>';
    protected $_twitter = NULL;

    //class constructor
    public function __construct() {
        $this->getTwitter();
    }

    //singleton twitter object   
    protected function getTwitter() {
        if (null === $this->_twitter) {
            $accessToken = new Zend_Oauth_Token_Access;
            $accessToken->setToken($this->_token)
                    ->setTokenSecret($this->_secret);

            $this->_twitter = new Zend_Service_Twitter(array(
                        'username' => $this->_username,
                        'accessToken' => $accessToken,
                    ));

            $response = $this->_twitter->account->verifyCredentials();
            if ($response->isError()) {
                throw new Zend_Exception('Provided credentials for Twitter log writer are wrong');
            }
        }
        return $this->_twitter;
    }

    //send a status message to twitter
    public function update( $tweet ) {
        $this->getTwitter()->status->update($tweet);
    }

}