LinkedIn OAuth 2.0

OAuth 2.0 Ruby wrapper for the LinkedIn API.

If you are using OAuth 1.0, see the hexgnu/linkedin

If you are upgrading from the oauth2-v0.1.0 version of this gem, see the upgrade notes below.

Installation

In Bundler:

gem "linkedin-oauth2", "~> 1.0"

Otherwise:

[sudo|rvm] gem install linkedin-oauth2

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-oauth2 gem and the steps below.

Here is how to get an access token using this linkedin-oauth2 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://getawesomeapp.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.

Step 3: Using LinkedIn's API

Once you have an access token, you can query LinkedIn's API.

Your access token encodes the permissions you're allowed to have. See Step 2 and this LinkedIn document for how to change the permissions. See each section's documentation on LinkedIn for more information on what permissions get you access to.

People

See the Profiles of yourself and other users. See the connections of yourslef and other users.

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/people

api = LinkedIn::API.new(access_token)

Yourself

me = api.profile

Others

evan_morikawa = api.profile("SDmkCxL2ya")
evan_morikawa = api.profile(id: "SDmkCxL2ya")
evan_morikawa = api.profile(url: "http://www.linkedin.com/in/evanmorikawa")

Specific Fields

See available fields here

my_name = api.profile(fields: ["first-name", "last-name"])
my_job_titles = api.profile(fields: ["id", {"positions" => ["title"]}])

Multiple People

me_and_others = api.profile(ids: ["self", "SDmkCxL2ya"])

Connections

# Takes the same arguments as `LinkedIn::API#profile`
my_connections = api.connections
evans_connections = api.connections(id: "SDmkCxL2ya")

New Connections

# Takes the same options argument as `LinkedIn::API#connections`
since = Time.new(2014,1,1)
my_new_connections = api.connections(since)
evans_new_connections = api.connections(since, id: "SDmkCxL2ya")

People Search

Search through People

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/people-search-api

api.search
api.search("Proximate")
api.search(keywords: "Proximate Olin")
api.search(keywords: "Proximate Olin", start: 10, count: 20)
api.search(school_name: "Olin College of Engineering")

api.search(fields: {facets: ["code", {buckets: ["code", "name"]}] },
                    facets: "location")

# Identify all 1st degree connections living in the San Francisco Bay Area
# See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/people-search-api#Facets
api.search(fields: {facets: ["code", {buckets: ["code", "name", "count"]}]},
           facets: "location,network",
           facet: ["location,us:84", "network,F"])

Groups

Access and interact with LinkedIn Groups

You need the "rw_groups" permission for most group actions

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/groups

# My groups
api.group_suggestions
api.group_memberships

# Another group
api.group_profile(id: 12345)
api.group_posts(id: 12345, count: 10, start: 10)

# Participate
api.add_group_share(12345, title: "Hi")

api.join_group(12345)

Companies

Detailed overviews of Company information

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/companies

# Company info
api.company(name: "google")
api.company(id: 12345)
api.company_updates(name: "google")
api.company_statistics(name: "google")

# Info on a particular company update
api.company_update_comments(1337, name: "google")
api.company_update_likes(1337, name: "google")

# Follow/unfollow
api.follow_company(12345)
api.unfollow_company(12345)

# Need rw_company_admin
api.add_company_share(12345, content: "Hi")

Jobs

A search for Jobs on LinkedIn

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/jobs

# Find a job
api.job(id: 12345)

# Your jobs
api.job_bookmarks
api.job_suggestions
api.add_job_bookmark(12345)

Share and Social Stream

View and update content on social streams

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/share-and-social-stream

# Your news feed
api.network_updates
api.shares

api.add_share(content: "hi")
api.update_comment(12345, content: "hi")

# For a particular feed item
api.share_comments(12345)
api.share_likes(12345)

api.like_share(12345)
api.unlike_share(12345)

Communications

Invitations and messages between connections apis

See https://developer.linkedin.com/documents/communications

# Need w_messages permissions

api.send_message("Subject", "Body", ["user1234", "user3456"])

Documentation

On RubyDoc here

Read the source for LinkedIn::API and LinkedIn::OAuth2

Upgrading

v1.0 of linkedin-oauth2 is a near complete re-write of the gem. Its primary goals were to:

• Better isolate OAuth 2.0 logic
• Better documentation around OAuth 2.0
• Build on top of Faraday
• Modularize the API Endpoints
• Better cover LinkedIn's vast API & audit deprecated actions
• Achieve near perfect test coverage & code quality

There are two places you may be upgrading from:

1. oauth2-v0.1 of this linkedin-oauth2 gem
2. hexgnu/linkedin OAuth 1.0 gem

From oauth2-v0.1.0 of linkedin-oauth2

See the README from oauth2-v0.1

• The OAuth portion has substantially changed. There should be no changes for the signature of API calls or the response hashes

• Some of the API calls in the oauth2-v0.1 were actually broken in the initial OAuth2.0 transition. Those have now been fixed.

• Instead of a single LinkedIn::Client object there are now two separate major objects.

  1. LinkedIn::OAuth2 for performing authentication
  2. LinkedIn::API for accessing the API

• Requests used to be done through the OAuth2::AccessToken object. Now they are done through LinkedIn::Connection, which is a thin subclass of Faraday::Connection. This is composed into the main LinkedIn::API object.

From hexgnu/linkedin OAuth 1.0

• OAuth 2.0 is substantially different then OAuth 1.0
• The actual API methods, arguments, and return values were designed to look the same as hexgnu/linkedin. You should only have to swap out the Authentication and API client construction.
• There is no more consumer object. Everything in OAuth 2.0 is centered around acquiring an Access Token. Use the new LinkedIn::OAuth2 class to acquire the token.
• There is no more single client object. The equivalent is the LinkedIn::API object. The LinkedIn::API object only needs an access token to work
• Requests used to be done through an OAuth::AccessToken object. Now they are done through LinkedIn::Connection, which is a thin subclass of Faraday::Connection. This means that you have the full power and method signatures of Faraday at your disposal.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Credits

• Evan Morikawa (emorikawa)
• Matt Kirk (hexgnu)
• Wynn Netherland (pengwynn)
• Josh Kalderimis (joshk)
• Erik Michaels-Ober (sferik)
• And Many More Contributors

License

Copyright ©️ 2014-present Evan Morikawa 2013-2014 Matt Kirk 2009-11 Wynn Netherland and contributors. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the MIT-LICENSE file. See LICENSE for details.