Authenticating via OAuth¶

PRAW supports the three types of applications that can be registered on Reddit. Those are:

Script Application
Web Application
Installed Application

Before you can use any one of these with PRAW, you must first register an application of the appropriate type on Reddit.

Script Application¶

Script applications are the simplest type of application to work with because they don’t involve any sort of callback process to obtain an access_token.

While script applications do not involve a redirect uri, Reddit still requires that you provide one when registering your application – http://localhost:8080 is a simple one to use.

In order to use a script application with PRAW you need four pieces of information:

client_id:	The client ID is the 14 character string listed just under “personal use script” for the desired developed application
client_secret:	The client secret is the 27 character string listed adjacent to `secret` for the application.
password:	The password for the Reddit account used to register the script application.
username:	The username of the Reddit account used to register the script application.

With this information authorizing as username using a script app is as simple as:

reddit = praw.Reddit(client_id='SI8pN3DSbt0zor',
                     client_secret='xaxkj7HNh8kwg8e5t4m6KvSrbTI',
                     password='1guiwevlfo00esyy',
                     user_agent='testscript by /u/fakebot3',
                     username='fakebot3')

To verify that you are authenticated as the correct user run:

print(reddit.user.me())

The output should contain the same name as you entered for username.

Note

If the following exception is raised, double check your credentials, and ensure that that the username and password you are using are for the same user with which the script application is associated:

OAuthException: invalid_grant error processing request

Two-Factor Authentication¶

A 2FA token can be used by joining it to the password with a colon:

reddit = praw.Reddit(client_id='SI8pN3DSbt0zor',
                     client_secret='xaxkj7HNh8kwg8e5t4m6KvSrbTI',
                     password='1guiwevlfo00esyy:955413',
                     user_agent='testscript by /u/fakebot3',
                     username='fakebot3')

However, for an automated script there is little benefit to using 2FA. The token must be refreshed after one hour; therefore, the 2FA secret would have to be stored along with the rest of the credentials in order to generate the token, which defeats the point of having an extra credential beyond the password.

If you do choose to use 2FA, you must handle the prawcore.OAuthException that will be raised by API calls after one hour.

Web Application¶

A web application is useful for two primary purposes:

You have a website and want to be able to access Reddit from your users’ accounts.
You want to limit the access one of your PRAW-based programs has to Reddit, or simply do not want to pass your username and password to PRAW.

When registering a web application you must provide a valid redirect uri. If you are running a website you will want to enter the appropriate callback URL and configure that endpoint to complete the code flow.

If you aren’t actually running a website, you can use the Obtaining a Refresh Token script to obtain refresh_tokens. Enter http://localhost:8080 as the redirect uri when using this script.

Whether or not you use the script there are two processes involved in obtaining access or refresh tokens.

Obtain the Authorization URL¶

The first step to completing the web application code flow is to obtain the authorization URL. You can do that as follows:

reddit = praw.Reddit(client_id='SI8pN3DSbt0zor',
                     client_secret='xaxkj7HNh8kwg8e5t4m6KvSrbTI',
                     redirect_uri='http://localhost:8080',
                     user_agent='testscript by /u/fakebot3')
print(reddit.auth.url(['identity'], '...', 'permanent'))

The above will output an authorization URL for a permanent token that has only the identity scope. See url() for more information on these parameters.

This URL should be accessed by the account that desires to authorize their Reddit access to your application. On completion of that flow, the user’s browser will be redirected to the specified redirect_uri. After extracting verifying the state and extracting the code you can obtain the refresh token via:

print(reddit.auth.authorize(code))
print(reddit.user.me())

The first line of output is the refresh_token. You can save this for later use (see Using a Saved Refresh Token).

The second line of output reveals the name of the Redditor that completed the web application code flow. It also indicates that the reddit instance is now associated with that account.

Installed Application¶

The code flow can be used with an installed application just as described above with one change: set the value of client_secret to None when initializing Reddit.

The implicit flow is similar, however, the token is returned directly as part of the redirect. For the implicit flow call url() like so:

print(reddit.auth.url(['identity'], '...', implicit=True)

Then use implicit() to provide the authorization to the Reddit instance.

Using a Saved Refresh Token¶

A saved refresh token can be used to immediately obtain an authorized instance of Reddit like so:

reddit = praw.Reddit(client_id='SI8pN3DSbt0zor',
                     client_secret='xaxkj7HNh8kwg8e5t4m6KvSrbTI',
                     refresh_token='WeheY7PwgeCZj4S3QgUcLhKE5S2s4eAYdxM',
                     user_agent='testscript by /u/fakebot3')
print(reddit.auth.scopes())

The output from the above code displays which scopes are available on the Reddit instance.

Note

Observe that redirect_uri does not need to be provided in such cases. It is only needed when url() is used.

Read Only Mode¶

All application types support a read only mode. Read only mode provides access to Reddit like a logged out user would see including the default Subreddits in the reddit.front listings.

In the absence of a refresh_token both web and installed applications start in the read only mode. With such applications read only mode is disabled when authorize(), implicit() are successfully called. Script applications start up with read only mode disabled.

Read only mode can be toggled via:

# Enable read only mode
reddit.read_only = True

# Disable read only mode (must have a valid authorization)
reddit.read_only = False