Oauth token needs oauth signature and oauth signature needs oauth token?

[WestDigi]

I am trying to build an automated system that periodically fetches data from the twitter ads api automatically.

I believed that this would require an Oauth 2.0 token since i am looking for a automated system. However, my generated oauth 2.0 token does not seem to be able to get any data.

I have therefor been advised to revert to the Oauth 1.0 system. The process of using this system requires generating an Oauth Token.

I do have a registered app. It is from the app that i am getting the following values -

Consumer API key:
Consumer API secret:
Access token:
Access token secret:

However, to be able to use the API, as per the documents, I need the oauth token and the oauth signature.

The oauth token which as i understand is different from the Access Token.

As per the documents, the oauth token generation process requires already having the the oauth signature to be successful.

However, as per the documentation, the process of generating the oauth signature requires already having an oauth token which is what i am trying to generate in the first place

I have the following questions:

1. Do i need the Oauth 1 or the Oauth 2 token for the Twitter Ads API.

2. As i am trying to create an automatic system, I do not wish to have a user authorising manually every time so how will the Oauth 1 token work for this instance. What will i have to put in the oauth call back url
   

3. How do I generate an Oauth 1 token when i cannot generate a signature since the process of generating a signature requires already having an Oauth token
   

4.  Is the Oauth signature unique for every API query so i will have to recreate it every time i have to make a new API call query ( i.e. for every newly create unique query i have a new Oauth signature which i can use the same signature for the same query being run multiple times periodically?)
   

5.  The oauth_nonce is any randomly generated value as long as it is in the correct format?
   

Thanks,
Shiv

[joncipriano]

1. Do i need the Oauth 1 or the Oauth 2 token for the Twitter Ads API.

You need OAuth 1.0.

2. As i am trying to create an automatic system, I do not wish to have a user authorising manually every time so how will the Oauth 1 token work for this instance. What will i have to put in the oauth call back url

Once you authorize a user, you can save their access token and access token secret. They will not expire, unless the user revokes access to your app. So, you only need to authorize a user once.

As for the rest of your questions, you should really use an OAuth library. It’s really unheard of and very rare for someone to code OAuth from scratch. It’s pretty difficult even for an experienced programmer. A list of OAuth libraries can be found at: https://oauth.net/1/

[WestDigi]

Thank you for the reply Jon,

1. I am just following the steps given in the Twitter docs and not creating my own Oauth Library
   https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/authentication/guides/creating-a-signature

2. Can i pass any random string value in the oauth_nonce

3. Does every API call require creation of a call specific oauth signature?

My API call looks like this

GET /4/stats/accounts/?entity=CAMPAIGN&entity_ids=bh64g&start_time=2018-10-04&end_time=2018-10-07&granularity=TOTAL&placement=ALL_ON_TWITTER&metric_groups=ENGAGEMENT HTTP/1.1
Host: ads-api.twitter.com
User-Agent: Twitter to PowerBI connection
Accept-Encoding: gzip

I am getting 401 authentication errors on this.

Please help me out!

Best,
Shiv

[WestDigi]

While using the access token from my app keys and tokens sections as the oauth_token in either oauth/authorize or oauth/authenticate, i get this error

What did i miss?

[joncipriano]

You should use an “existing” library to handle OAuth (not create your own). We don’t get into the details of teaching how OAuth works on this forum since it is a programming standard. There are plenty of tutorial resources on the web for that.

I you want to share what programming language you are using we can possibly recommend a library or SDK. We have official SDKs in Ruby and Python and there are plenty of community SDKs that can make your life a whole lot easier.

If you still insist on writing your own OAuth code (highly not recommended), you may find what you are looking for on this page:
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/authentication/guides/authorizing-a-request.html

[WestDigi]

Hi Jon,

I used the python SDK to do the authentication process earlier (twitter-ads library). It worked fine for authentication but i could not get further than that due to lack of examples and documentation.

I looked at the python github but did not find anything on reporting

What i am trying to do is to get the data which is currently downloaded as csv files from the twitter ads web interface. I need to get the same data through the API

I found no examples of how to make calls to the twitter ads API using python for reporting ad performance.

What i am trying to do is to get performance data -
impressions
engagements
engagement rate
media views
media engagements
promoted impressions
promoted engagements
promoted engagement rate
permalink clicks
app opens
app installs

and other similar data data through the API. If you would be kind enough to guide me on how to get this data through Python then that would be extremely helpful

Best,
Shiv

[WestDigi]

Hi Jon,

I managed to get this working through Python. However, i am not able to get the code for how to get the list of promoted tweets within a line item. Could you please help me with this.
Thanks!

[juanshishido]

However, i am not able to get the code for how to get the list of promoted tweets within a line item.

You could do this in the following way:

>>> ptw = PromotedTweet.all(account, line_item_ids="cgr54")

As an example of looking at the entire object, you can use the to_params method (I’m using json.dumps for formatting only; you can omit this):

>>> for p in ptw:
...   print(json.dumps(p.to_params(), indent=2))
{
  "approval_status": "ACCEPTED", 
  "created_at": "2018-09-12T19:34:21Z", 
  "updated_at": "2018-09-12T20:24:18Z", 
  "entity_status": "ACTIVE", 
  "tweet_id": "1039960130727464960", 
  "line_item_id": "cgr54", 
  "id": "270k4z"
}

Hope this helps. Thanks!