Unable to post to Twitter using CURL on the second day

I have a POST request working in POSTMAN that posts a tweet to twitter, through twitter developer API. Authentication is using OATH 1 with following keys/secret/token.

Consumer Key=xxx
Consumer Secret=xxx
Access Token=xxx
Token Secret=xxx

When I convert it to a url command using POSTMAN's "code" function, the two secrets are not in there. Instead there is some extra fields, such as oauth_timestamp, oauth_nonce and oauth_signature. I don't know where they come from.

curl --location 'https://api.twitter.com/2/tweets' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Authorization: OAuth oauth_consumer_key="xxx",oauth_token="xxx",oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1",oauth_timestamp="1713138609",oauth_nonce="Qih2bQZUAee",oauth_version="1.0",oauth_signature="6gbXQq8Ti%2FK84pGgzmgrqEr%2BKms%3D"' \

the curl command only worked for 1 day, the next day I got a 401 error. I think I still need to pass the two secrets in the CURL command. How do I do that?

ChatGPT:

In the OAuth 1.0a authentication scheme, which is used by Twitter API, your secrets (consumer secret and token secret) should not be directly included in the HTTP request headers or the URL. Instead, they are used to generate the oauth_signature, which is a key component of the OAuth 1.0a authorization header.

Understanding the OAuth Parameters

oauth_nonce: A unique token your application generates for each unique request.
oauth_timestamp: The timestamp of your request, which helps prevent replay attacks.
oauth_signature: A HMAC-SHA1 generated hash value, created from your secrets and some of the other OAuth parameters.

Why Your cURL Command Fails After a Day The reason your cURL command only worked for a day and then started giving you a 401 error is likely due to the oauth_timestamp and oauth_nonce. Since these values are supposed to be unique for each request, reusing them makes the request invalid after their initial use. The oauth_signature must also be recalculated each time, as it depends on the nonce and timestamp.

Generating the OAuth Signature and Other Parameters Dynamically To use OAuth with cURL in a way that continues to work across different days and requests, you need a method to dynamically generate the oauth_nonce, oauth_timestamp, and especially the oauth_signature for each request. This typically involves programming and cannot easily be done directly in a cURL command without additional scripting or software.

A Simple Python Script to Generate OAuth 1.0a Headers You can use a Python script to handle the OAuth 1.0a authentication. Here's a basic example using the requests_oauthlib library to handle the OAuth signing process for Twitter:

pip install requests_oauthlib

import json
from requests_oauthlib import OAuth1Session

# Replace 'xxx' with your actual consumer key, consumer secret, access token, and token secret
consumer_key = 'xxx'
consumer_secret = 'xxx'
access_token = 'xxx'
token_secret = 'xxx'

# Setting up the OAuth session
twitter = OAuth1Session(consumer_key,
                        client_secret=consumer_secret,
                        resource_owner_key=access_token,
                        resource_owner_secret=token_secret)

# The URL to create a new Tweet
url = 'https://api.twitter.com/2/tweets'

# The payload for the new Tweet
payload = {'text': 'Hello world from the Twitter API and OAuth 1.0a!'}

# Making the request
response = twitter.post(url, json=payload)
print(response.status_code)
print(response.text)

sunmingtao / sample-code

Unable to post to Twitter using CURL on the second day #349