The first step to use the LinkedIn API is to create an app in the LinkedIn Developer Tool. In this tutorial, we will see how you can get your OAuth 2.0 credentials to use the LinkedIn API.
This post is part of the complete guide on how to use the LinkedIn API with Python
- Get Your OAuth Credentials
- Authenticate Using OAuth 2.0
- Get Your Own User Information
- Simple Steps to Find Any Company ID on LinkedIn
- How to Post On LinkedIn API With Python
- How to Scrape LinkedIn Jobs with Python
Let’s look at the steps to create an API app.
What is an application programming interface (API)?
What you will need to use Linkedin API
Before you can use the LinkedIn API, you need two things.
- LinkedIn Company Page
- Company Logo
1. Create the App
Go to the LinkedIn Developers Tool and click on “Create app”.
Add Your App name, Company Page URL and Logo.
Click on “Create App”
2. Verify the App
The company page needs to verify the app before you can use it.
In your App settings, Click on “Verify”.
Click on “Generate URL”.
Copy the Link in your browser while connected to your Linkedin Account.
Success!
Go back to the verification page and click on “I’m done”
3. Set-Up the Redirect URI
The redirect URI will be used to define where to which URL the token will be sent to.
The redirect URI is important because setting this up to a live site could let an attacker get access to your token.
We will set this up to our local computer (or localhost).
In the OAuth Tab, go to OAuth 2.0 settings.
In the Authorized redirect URLs for your app, add http://localhost:8080.
4. Save Your Credentials
Next, you will need to create a credentials.json file that looks like this.
5. Request Products
Go to products and ask for permissions to: “Share on LinkedIn”, “Sign-in with LinkedIn” and “Marketing Developer Platform”.
More than likely the “Marketing Developer Platform” will not get approved, limiting you to a very few features of the API.
This tutorial only shows what you can do without the LinkedIn Marketing product… which is…
… not much.
- Get your own user ID
- Get your own email address
- Post on LinkedIn as yourself.
This is it!
You now know how to get your LinkedIn OAuth 2.0 API credentials.
The next step is to authenticate to the LinkedIn API using Python.
SEO Strategist at Tripadvisor, ex- Seek (Melbourne, Australia). Specialized in technical SEO. Writer in Python, Information Retrieval, SEO and machine learning. Guest author at SearchEngineJournal, SearchEngineLand and OnCrawl.
