Python LinkedIn V2

Python interface to the LinkedIn API V2

This library provides a pure Python interface to the LinkedIn Profile and Connections REST APIs.

LinkedIn provides a service that lets people bring their LinkedIn profiles and networks with them to your site or application via their OAuth based API. This library provides a lightweight interface over a complicated LinkedIn OAuth based API to make it for python programmers easy to use.

Installation

You can install python-linkedin-v2 library via pip:

$ pip install python-linkedin-v2

Authentication

The LinkedIn REST API now supports the OAuth 2.0 protocol for authentication. This package provides a full OAuth 2.0 implementation for connecting to LinkedIn as well as an option for using an OAuth 1.0a flow that can be helpful for development purposes or just accessing your own data.

HTTP API example

Set LINKEDIN_API_KEY and LINKEDIN_API_SECRET, configure your app to redirect to http://localhost:8080/code, then execute:

0. http_api.py
1. Visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser, curl or similar
2. A tab in your browser will open up, give LinkedIn permission there
3. You'll then be presented with a list of available routes, hit any, e.g.:
4. curl -XGET http://localhost:8080/get_profile

Developer Authentication

To connect to LinkedIn as a developer or just to access your own data, you don't even have to implement an OAuth 2.0 flow that involves redirects. You can simply use the 4 credentials that are provided to you in your LinkedIn appliation as part of an OAuth 1.0a flow and immediately access your data. Here's how:

from linkedin_v2 import linkedin

# Define CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET,  
# USER_TOKEN, and USER_SECRET from the credentials 
# provided in your LinkedIn application

# Instantiate the developer authentication class

authentication = linkedin.LinkedInDeveloperAuthentication(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, 
                                                          USER_TOKEN, USER_SECRET, 
                                                          RETURN_URL, linkedin.PERMISSIONS.enums.values())

# Pass it in to the app...

application = linkedin.LinkedInApplication(authentication)

# Use the app....

application.get_profile()

Production Authentication

In order to use the LinkedIn OAuth 2.0, you have an application key and application secret. You can get more detail from here.

For debugging purposes you can use the credentials below. It belongs to my test application. Nothing's harmful.

KEY = 'wFNJekVpDCJtRPFX812pQsJee-gt0zO4X5XmG6wcfSOSlLocxodAXNMbl0_hw3Vl'
SECRET = 'daJDa6_8UcnGMw1yuq9TjoO_PMKukXMo8vEMo7Qv5J-G3SPgrAV0FqFCd0TNjQyG'

You can also get those keys from here.

LinkedIn redirects the user back to your website's URL after granting access (giving proper permissions) to your application. We call that url RETURN URL. Assuming your return url is http://localhost:8000, you can write something like this:

from linkedin_v2 import linkedin

API_KEY = 'wFNJekVpDCJtRPFX812pQsJee-gt0zO4X5XmG6wcfSOSlLocxodAXNMbl0_hw3Vl'
API_SECRET = 'daJDa6_8UcnGMw1yuq9TjoO_PMKukXMo8vEMo7Qv5J-G3SPgrAV0FqFCd0TNjQyG'
RETURN_URL = 'http://localhost:8000'

authentication = linkedin.LinkedInAuthentication(API_KEY, API_SECRET, RETURN_URL, linkedin.PERMISSIONS.enums.values())
# Optionally one can send custom "state" value that will be returned from OAuth server
# It can be used to track your user state or something else (it's up to you)
# Be aware that this value is sent to OAuth server AS IS - make sure to encode or hash it
#authorization.state = 'your_encoded_message'
print authentication.authorization_url  # open this url on your browser
application = linkedin.LinkedInApplication(authentication)

When you grant access to the application, you will be redirected to the return url with the following query strings appended to your RETURN_URL:

"http://localhost:8000/?code=AQTXrv3Pe1iWS0EQvLg0NJA8ju_XuiadXACqHennhWih7iRyDSzAm5jaf3R7I8&state=ea34a04b91c72863c82878d2b8f1836c"

This means that the value of the authorization_code is AQTXrv3Pe1iWS0EQvLg0NJA8ju_XuiadXACqHennhWih7iRyDSzAm5jaf3R7I8. After setting it by hand, we can call the .get_access_token() to get the actual token.

authentication.authorization_code = 'AQTXrv3Pe1iWS0EQvLg0NJA8ju_XuiadXACqHennhWih7iRyDSzAm5jaf3R7I8'
authentication.get_access_token()

After you get the access token, you are now permitted to make API calls on behalf of the user who granted access to you app. In addition to that, in order to prevent from going through the OAuth flow for every consecutive request, one can directly assign the access token obtained before to the application instance.

application = linkedin.LinkedInApplication(token='AQTFtPILQkJzXHrHtyQ0rjLe3W0I')

Profile API

The Profile API returns a member's LinkedIn profile. For more information, check out the documentation.

application.get_profile()
{
  "id": "yrZCpj2Z12",
  "firstName": {
    "localized": {
      "en_US": "Bob"
    },
    "preferredLocale": {
      "country": "US",
      "language": "en"
    }
  },
  "lastName": {
    "localized": {
      "en_US": "Smith"
    },
    "preferredLocale": {
      "country": "US",
      "language": "en"
    }
  },
  "location": {
    "countryCode": "us",
    "postalCode": "94101",
    "standardizedLocationUrn": "urn:li:standardizedLocationKey:(us,94101)"
  },
  "positions": {
    "660879450": {
      "companyName": {
        "localized": {
          "en_US": "LinkedIn"
        },
        "preferredLocale": {
          "country": "US",
          "language": "en"
        }
      },
      "id": 660879450,
      "title": {
        "localized": {
          "en_US": "Staff Software Engineer"
        },
        "preferredLocale": {
          "country": "US",
          "language": "en"
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "headline": {
    "localized": {
      "en_US": "API Enthusiast at LinkedIn"
    },
    "preferredLocale": {
      "country": "US",
      "language": "en"
    }
  }
}

Connections API

The Connections API returns a list of 1st degree connections for a user who has granted access to their account. For more information, you check out its documentation.

To fetch your connections, you simply call .get_connections() method with proper GET querystring:

application.get_connections()
{
  "elements": [
    {
      "to": "urn:li:person:9HfhE6QlBz"
    }
  ],
  "paging": {
    "total": 1,
    "count": 50,
    "start": 0,
    "links": []
  }
}

application.get_connections(totals_only=True)
{
   "elements":[

   ],
   "paging":{
      "total":303,
      "count":0,
      "start":0
   }
}

Throttle Limits

LinkedIn API keys are throttled by default. You should take a look at the Throttle Limits Documentation to get more information about it.