How to get email is using twitter api on callback page using php

dadvir · 2012-08-22T00:16:38.000Z

Hi,

Does anyone knows whether Twitter would roll out an update to include the user’s mail address?
Why would I implement the sign in with Twitter?

I need the e-mail for the application needs.

Please help/answer.

Best regards.

JormaKarvonen · 2012-08-26T18:26:09.000Z

It looks like all designers are designing their application equally. They want to use user’s e-mail address to prevent duplicate log-ins. Twitter provides you with an unique “e-mail address”. Here @JormaKarvonen is one of them. If you create an application with the twitter id only, you are garanted that no user is using his/her e-mail address twice to log-in your system. Ignore fb log-ins, use only twitter.

JulienCoupez · 2012-08-31T13:15:38.000Z

Facebook does give email, 850M users doesn’t care…
Twitter doesn’t, none of developpers would add it…
Wrong choice, Twitter team…

emmanix2002 · 2012-09-05T19:18:33.000Z

Actually, same issue…
It took me less than an hour to set up sign in with Google and sign in with Facebook.
Spent the better part of the day trying to grok sign in with Twitter; now I have it working, only to realise that it’s not so useful (at least considering my apps structure).
This is very disappointing!

dhawannikunj · 2012-09-10T10:20:00.000Z

Twitter API is useless without email… I am using ASP.Net MVC 4 and integration with google and yahoo was less than 1 minute and with Facebook I could get the email with little efforts…

Twitter - Please provide email address otherwise your login API is useless to most of the developers…

I Removed the twitter button too…

shanoofrahman · 2012-09-13T04:56:49.000Z

whats the coding for twitter API

fedmest · 2012-09-20T13:38:28.000Z

Every other provider we have been working with (Google+, LinkedIn, Windows Live, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and a few more) passes email addresses on to the app that is signing in.

It is a shame but we will have to remove twitter from the available options. After all, it is ridiculous to expect that the user (after signing in with Twitter) will also want to again provide their email address: they’ve already done so in signing in!

Very silly attitude of the twitter people!

zogash · 2012-09-21T13:24:40.000Z

+1

pstemper42 · 2012-09-26T16:31:06.000Z

I totally get twitter’s response of “We don’t want to give out personal information”, which is why the other providers (like FaceBook) allow you to specifiy that you NEED the email, and let the person logging in decide if they trust the site enough to give them their email.

We are implementing a site (like many others) that use the email address as the “key” for a user. We are supporting the major authentication APIs from the major vendors, with the exception of twitter now…

One less login type to support. Thank you Twitter for making the decision for us!

husseinimel · 2012-09-27T20:08:18.000Z

I think it’s funny that Google and Facebook who have far more users than Twitter make this information available, but Twitter chooses not to. In fact, most Twitter users already have Facebook and/or Google accounts.

So why are you making decisions for users instead of letting users make up their own mind?

This “moral high horse” attitude is a little puzzling. Far bigger and more useful fish in the sea make this data available and leave the choice to their users whether to provide it.

binotxa · 2012-09-28T00:13:09.000Z

I agree too, please change to OAuth v-2 and let us get the user email address

HarryKrill · 2012-10-01T03:54:49.000Z

I was going to work on adding Twitter to the methods of one-click login for a system I’m working on but I ran into the issue that everyone else on this thread has: No way to request the e-mail address. Let me put it to you simply: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and everyone else already do this via a “scope” parameter. A developer has to request the e-mail address as a separate permission, it is up to the user to approve the request, and developers are generally made aware that far fewer users will sign up for a service when they use that permission. Making it available is the smart thing to do. The fact that this thread is over a year old and nothing has been done despite numerous people asking for it leads me to believe that one the following scenarios is true:

The developers are technically inept and incapable of introducing such a feature.
Internal political bickering has neutered effective development of the platform.
Someone inside has taken some inane “moral high ground”.
Twitter doesn’t actually understand that their best target audience is the third-party developer.

I’m thinking it is a combination of the above because several threads on OAuth 2 have also been on the table for over a year and Twitter has recently taken steps to guarantee only they can develop Twitter applications. In addition, not a single Twitter dev has responded to this thread since it was started over a year ago. Either they hope the problem will go away (it won’t) or they think the original answer was good enough (it isn’t). This is disappointing because it just hinders what would otherwise be a useful authentication service.

Fortunately, most people with a Twitter account (> 95%) also have a Facebook and/or Google account. The information available via those two services is also richer and more complete from a developer’s perspective. Twitter: Your primary competitors are capable of doing something you aren’t.

Also, assuming a Twitter dev ever reads this, note that for every complaint you receive, there are at least ten other complaints about the same issue that you never hear about. And, given Twitter’s popularity, let’s make that fifty complaints. This thread is therefore effectively representing approximately 2,500 application developers who are frustrated you don’t offer an e-mail address. Assuming an average of 1,000 users per year per app, that translates into 2.5 million permanently lost Twitter users to Facebook and Google annually. You’re bleeding users from an artery that is easily closed. Throw some developers at this serious problem and fix it. And, while you are at it, offer a way to get more than the ‘id’ and ‘screen_name’ (first name, last name, and e-mail).

marsti85 · 2012-10-01T16:47:44.000Z

For me this thread is still missing very good reasons to implement email into the API. I mean there are some posts which give reasons (and more which don’t give a reason at all), but IMO the most common reasons are:

Google/FB/… offer the mail addresses (which isn’t a real reason because it doesn’t explain the need for email)
Need it for user identication/user uniqueness (which is wrong because users may have or create several email addresses)
Need it for other technical reasons which don’t really explain why it’s needed
Want to spam the people with mails which they most likely don’t want (to be honest I can’t believe that the most posters here are requiring it for a good reason which benefits the user)

You shouldn’t blame Twitter, it’s not their fault that software which you are using or developing requires email just because it’s normal to use it for registration even if it’s not really needed. You could still use Twitter nickname to fake the email field in database.

In common I don’t see good reasons why a page which offers login via social networks should have the right to get email address (and why login doesn’t work without giving that permission), and the “email” permission is misused in most cases. If an user really wants to get mails from you, than that should be OPTIONAL and with explicit permission (so: Entering of email address) by the user.

And to say it again: Email address is NOTHING to rely on in terms of user recognition and especially not for uniqueness. And don’t forget that not all people are happy to give that permission.

PS: I would love to use Twitter for login, because I don’t want to be forced to give my mail address to some page I’m registering without needing mails/notifications from that page. And I don’t like that most pages requires email to register.

nlmunro · 2012-10-04T14:10:19.000Z

Just updated ‘register via Linkedin’ on our client’s site as it now has email, so we can provide the same ‘fast-track’ registration workflow as Facebook. Twitter remains the odd-man-out.

ricferrer · 2012-10-13T13:02:09.000Z

cant believe this!!! this is such a short sided approach. Without e-mail addresse the API is useless. @kurrik could you explain why this would make sense at all for apps and web-apps that don’t rely 100% on twitter (like twitpic, etc)?

The purpose of using the API for authentication and user data is non-existant and makes us question why we would implement it in our App. There would be now reason. Now I understand why “log-in with twitter” is not really widespread. It just makes the process longer… If the solution is to “ask the user” for his e-mail after authentification… I can just ask the user right away and skip the twitter authentication completely or alternatively use an API like Facebook’s that provide real value to both the developer and the user.

HarryKrill · 2012-10-22T07:32:34.000Z

There are several rational arguments for this.

First rational argument: Businesses, that want to make money (i.e. stay in business), want something in exchange for access to their services on the Internet. An e-mail address is a perfectly good mechanism of trade. Let’s pretend I’m a business owner: You give me your e-mail address, I give you access to my service because I, as the business owner, deem that a valid form of trade. Businesses will take either that or money - a credit card, PayPal transfer, etc. Which would you rather do - pay money or give your e-mail address? Nothing is free but you sound like the sort of person that wants everything for free because you don’t associate value to services. Go start a business and you’ll change your perspective REALLY fast.

Another rational argument: If we have to ask for the e-mail address, we also have to VERIFY it. This is the step that sign in authentication with a trusted service has already done. If you sign in with Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc. you’ve already validated the e-mail address with them. The verification step in any software product is a painful process that is difficult to implement correctly and users hate doing verification. Therefore, verifying after signing in with Twitter defeats the entire purpose of signing in with Twitter.

Final rational argument: A shared e-mail address across multiple sign in services is quite compelling for improving end-user usability. A user could have (and a lot of people do) the same e-mail address associated with Twitter, Google, Facebook, and other sites. Are they going to remember which social media service they signed in with on all websites or that they’ve been to your website before? No. Should the sign in portion of the software care? Probably not. However, an e-mail address from a sign in provider is quite useful for automatically linking accounts that would otherwise not be linked.

Also, arguments against a feature in an API are moot when it goes against an overwhelming desire for the feature. This thread is clamoring for it and you and a Twitter dev are the only two against it. While you are fine with and free to not use e-mail addresses in your web applications, it is plainly obvious to me that everyone else wants it and I will operate under the assumption that the reasons are legitimate until proven otherwise. Your arguments against this imply that programmers don’t know what they are doing - thedailywtf.com exists toward that end as well. But there are still plenty of decent to great programmers out there that do know what they are doing and one or more of my arguments above apply to them and they see Twitter as useless and are rightly justified in thinking so.

Now, I will agree with you on one point: If a service wants an e-mail address or ANY other piece of information (first and last name, birthday, username, etc.), it is VERY important to display why that information is desired and precisely what purposes the information will be used for. These things are traditionally accomplished via “Terms of Service” and “Privacy Policy” statements. I’d love to be able to pass URLs to the various sign in services out there and have links show up that point to documents on my site that describe, in detail, what each piece of information is used for BEFORE the user agrees to sign in. It becomes weird to agree to a ToS and Privacy Policy statement AFTER you’ve already signed in and, in addition, waters down legal standing in a court of law. Given this day and age of lawsuit happy lawyers, I see the lack of such a feature as a major downside to the various sign in services. Having this feature would address your issues with asking for your e-mail address and not knowing what it will be used for while simultaneously appeasing the life-sucking lawyers of this world.

Ultimately, I still stand by my original statements. If Twitter wants to stay relevant, it needs to move forward now on this feature.

cgruiz79 · 2012-10-22T10:13:56.000Z

Perhaps, I’m a madman, or I’m sinning rookie, but nobody has come up (that’s no matter what facebook, google or others does) than there are others besides noble purposes for which most of us want the e-mail, there are bad people doing data mining to fill your mailbox from spam, or worse (one per million is too much), and that the service giving the mail, is partly (although lawyers do not think the same) is responsability of who provides de information

Moreover, Twitter gives you information on the loggin to identify each unique user, as I know, the ID is unique …

And what is more important, the logging does not give benefits to the input channel, if not, rather the reverse, that your app has multiple channels Access gives you more options, but realistically most people have facebook , twitter, and at least one of yahoo, google or windows live, so it is not necessary to have all the wais avaiables.

In addition, most people usually go to the pages normally through the same channel, if I usually enter through facebook, facebook is going to be my only input channel normally.

And finally, most developers, is trying to show that twitter lose potential customers by by not being easily integrated into their pages, when the thing is that most of them regrets not being able to attract users because twitter don’t put things easier to them

amitspatil · 2012-10-29T16:51:13.000Z

If we cant access users email, why the hell we are using twitter api to know the “username” of the users ?? Twitter must include user email in API.

marketpad · 2012-11-21T20:56:16.000Z

Wow, what a waste of time we spent working on twitter integration! You won’t find twitter login, or integration in our website until Twitter decides to allow the user to permit access to their email address. Shouldn’t this be the user’s choice? (Just like almost every other oauth implementation)

Twitter login is useless, if used with other providers like facebook, and google. How are we supposed to validate the user’s identity between multiple provider logins? I guess we’re supposed to just create duplicate accounts, and annoy, or confuse our users. Well, we won’t be doing that!

No twitter option in our apps until this is resolved.

jonasulveseth · 2012-11-28T20:02:39.000Z

amzingly bad twitter