Obtaining a Refresh Token

The following program can be used to obtain a refresh token with the desired scopes. Such a token can be used in conjunction with the refresh_token keyword argument using in initializing an instance of Reddit. A list of all possible scopes can be found in the reddit API docs

#!/usr/bin/env python

"""This example demonstrates the flow for retrieving a refresh token.

In order for this example to work your application's redirect URI must be set
to http://localhost:8080.

This tool can be used to conveniently create refresh tokens for later use with
your web application OAuth2 credentials.

"""
import praw
import random
import socket
import sys


def receive_connection():
    """Wait for and then return a connected socket..

    Opens a TCP connection on port 8080, and waits for a single client.

    """
    server = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    server.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_REUSEADDR, 1)
    server.bind(('localhost', 8080))
    server.listen(1)
    client = server.accept()[0]
    server.close()
    return client


def send_message(client, message):
    """Send message to client and close the connection."""
    print(message)
    client.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK\r\n\r\n{}'.format(message).encode('utf-8'))
    client.close()


def main():
    """Provide the program's entry point when directly executed."""
    print('Go here while logged into the account you want to create a '
          'token for: https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps/')
    print('Click the create an app button. Put something in the name '
          'field and select the script radio button.')
    print('Put http://localhost:8080 in the redirect uri field and '
          'click create app')
    client_id = input('Enter the client ID, it\'s the line just under '
                      'Personal use script at the top: ')
    client_secret = input('Enter the client secret, it\'s the line next '
                          'to secret: ')
    commaScopes = input('Now enter a comma separated list of scopes, or '
                        'all for all tokens: ')

    if commaScopes.lower() == 'all':
        scopes = ['creddits', 'edit', 'flair', 'history', 'identity',
                  'modconfig', 'modcontributors', 'modflair', 'modlog',
                  'modothers', 'modposts', 'modself', 'modwiki',
                  'mysubreddits', 'privatemessages', 'read', 'report',
                  'save', 'submit', 'subscribe', 'vote', 'wikiedit',
                  'wikiread']
    else:
        scopes = commaScopes.strip().split(',')

    reddit = praw.Reddit(client_id=client_id.strip(),
                         client_secret=client_secret.strip(),
                         redirect_uri='http://localhost:8080',
                         user_agent='praw_refresh_token_example')
    state = str(random.randint(0, 65000))
    url = reddit.auth.url(scopes, state, 'permanent')
    print('Now open this url in your browser: '+url)
    sys.stdout.flush()

    client = receive_connection()
    data = client.recv(1024).decode('utf-8')
    param_tokens = data.split(' ', 2)[1].split('?', 1)[1].split('&')
    params = {key: value for (key, value) in [token.split('=')
                                              for token in param_tokens]}

    if state != params['state']:
        send_message(client, 'State mismatch. Expected: {} Received: {}'
                     .format(state, params['state']))
        return 1
    elif 'error' in params:
        send_message(client, params['error'])
        return 1

    refresh_token = reddit.auth.authorize(params['code'])
    send_message(client, 'Refresh token: {}'.format(refresh_token))
    return 0


if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main())