/flask-dance-twitter-sqla

Example app that logs in with Twitter using Flask-Dance

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

Flask-Dance Example App: Twitter SQLAlchemy Edition

This repository provides an example of how to use Flask-Dance with a SQLAlchemy storage. This particular repository uses Twitter as an OAuth provider, and it wires together the following Flask extensions:

You can run this code locally, or deploy it to Heroku to test it out.

Deploy to Heroku

Local Installation

Step 1: Get OAuth credentials from Twitter

Visit https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps to register an app on Twitter. You must set the application's authorization callback URL to http://127.0.0.1:5000/login/twitter/authorized.

Once you've registered your application on Twitter, Twitter will give you an app ID and app secret, which we'll use in step 4.

Step 2: Install code and dependencies

Run the following commands on your computer:

git clone https://github.com/singingwolfboy/flask-dance-twitter-sqla.git
cd flask-dance-twitter-sqla
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

These commands will clone this git repository onto your computer, create a virtual environment for this project, activate it, and install the dependencies listed in requirements.txt.

Also note that if you have trouble installing psycopg2, it's OK to skip it. That dependency is only needed if you are using PostgreSQL for your database, and if you're running locally, then you can use SQLite instead, which is simpler. SQLite is also the default option, so you don't need to reconfigure anything.

Step 3: Create the database

Since we're storing OAuth data in the SQLAlchemy storage, we need to create the database to hold that data. Fortunately, this project includes basic command line support, so doing so is pretty straightforward. Run this code:

flask createdb

If it worked, you should see the message "Database tables created".

Step 4: Set environment variables

Many applications use environment variables for configuration, and Flask-Dance is no exception. You'll need to set the following environment variables:

  • TWITTER_OAUTH_APP_ID: set this to the app ID you got from Twitter.
  • TWITTER_OAUTH_APP_SECRET: set this to the app secret you got from Twitter.
  • OAUTHLIB_INSECURE_TRANSPORT: set this to true. This indicates that you're doing local testing, and it's OK to use HTTP instead of HTTPS for OAuth. You should only do this for local testing. Do not set this in production! [oauthlib docs]

How you set these variables depends on your operating system. For Mac/Linux, you can use the export command. For Windows, you can use the SET command. If you don't want to worry about this, you can create a .env file with your environment variables, and use foreman to run your app. This repository has a .env.example file that you can copy.

Step 5: Run your app and login with Twitter!

If you're setting environment variables manually, run your app using the flask command:

flask run

If you're using a .env file for your environment variables, install foreman and use that to run your app:

foreman start

Then, go to http://localhost:5000/ to visit your app and log in with Twitter!