Overview:
Retrieving the basic profile of a LinkedIn user from a web application using the Python API python3-linkedin involves the following steps:
- After access grant from the user, an OAUTH 2.0 access token for LinkedIn access is obtained from the Return_URL provided by the developer. Read this article to understand the steps involved in getting the OAuth2 access token for linkedin.
- The access token is passed on to the LinkedInApplication constructor to create an application instance.
- The get_profile() method is invoked on the LinkedInApplication instance, which returns the basic user profile as a Python dictionary.
- Using the Python json module, the Python dictionary is converted into a JSON string and printed on the web page/web application.
- All the above steps are performed by the Python code which handles the Return_URL. In this case, the Python class AppHome hosted in CherryPy.
Example:
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# Example Web Application that accesses basic profile a #LinkedIn user using OAUTH2.0 and python3-linkedin API
# imports import os.path import json import io
# import CherryPy import cherrypy
# import the python3-linkedin api wrapper from linkedin import linkedin from linkedin import server
# Authorize the web application user to access LinkedIn services using OAuth2 applicationKey = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" applicationSecret = " xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" retURL = "http://localhost:8080" authentication = linkedin.LinkedInAuthentication( applicationKey, applicationSecret, retURL, [linkedin.PERMISSIONS.BASIC_PROFILE] ) # Get the authorization URL authorizationURL = authentication.authorization_url
# Serves the LinkedIn authorization page class LinkedInAuthorization: @cherrypy.expose def index(self): # redirect to LinkedIn authorization URL happens here raise cherrypy.HTTPRedirect(authorizationURL)
# Class for initial app home page and the post authorization app home page a.k.a return-URL # The post authorization page displays the basic user profile as a JSON string class HomeProfile: @cherrypy.expose def index(self, *args, **kwargs):
content = io.StringIO()
# Home page case - after authorization if len(kwargs) > 0: authCode = kwargs["code"] authentication.authorization_code = authCode token = authentication.get_access_token();
application = linkedin.LinkedInApplication(token=token.access_token) basicProfile = application.get_profile()
profileString = json.dumps(basicProfile) content.write(json.dumps(profileString, indent=4, sort_keys=True))
output = content.getvalue() content.close()
return [bytes(output, 'utf-8')]
# Home page case - before authorization content.write('<html>') content.write('<head>') content.write('<title>') content.write('Sample web application that gets LinkedIn access and prints basic user profile') content.write('</title>') content.write('</head>')
content.write('<body>') content.write('<h1>Sample web application that prints LinkedIn basic user profile using OAUTH 2.0</h1>') content.write('<p>Sample web application that gets Linkedin authorization from the ') content.write('user and prints the basic user profile</p>') content.write('<form action="for_linkedin_access" method="post">') content.write('<input type="submit" value="Authorize Sample Application for Linkedin Access">') content.write('</form>') content.write('</body>')
output = content.getvalue() content.close()
return [bytes(output, 'utf-8')]
conf = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'tutorial.conf')
if __name__ == '__main__': cherrypy.tree.mount(HomeProfile(), '/', config=conf) cherrypy.tree.mount(LinkedInAuthorization(), '/for_linkedin_access', config=conf) cherrypy.engine.start() cherrypy.engine.block()
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Output:
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{"siteStandardProfileRequest": {"url": "https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&authType=name&authToken=xxxx&trk=api*a5522416*s5724316*"}, "id": "xxxxxxxxxx", "lastName": "userLastName", "headline": "Position of the user", "firstName": "User First Name"} |