Tips and more¶

To see prawoauth2 in action check the examples directory or Reddit Goodreads Bot.

To see what all class methods are available or any advanced usage, check API Reference.

How to save configuration and settings¶

prawoauth2 does not force developer to save tokens/settings in specific format or location. It gives full freedom to the developer to handle them and save them wherever he wishes. So you are free to save them in plain text file, ini, json, yaml or python. prawoauth2 also does not save the refreshed tokens anywhere, so it is developer’s responsibility to save the new access tokens. I prefer saving all the tokens in a file called tokens.py and bot related settings in settings.py. Both of these files will stay in the same directory where bot is run.

# tokens.py
app_key = '3...Y'
app_secret = 'L...T'
access_token = 'E...N'
refresh_token = 'F...R'

# settings.py
scopes = ['identity', 'submit', 'read']
user_agent = 'Super Reddit Bot (by /u/avinassh)'

However you are free to save them anywhere you want, /opt, /etc/prawoauth2 or ~/.

Keeping track of refreshed access tokens¶

prawoauth2 handles getting new access_token whenever it is expired. Usually, 99% of the times you don’t need to keep track of new access_token. As long as you have valid refresh_token, the script will run fine since prawoauth2 will handle everything. However in case you want to get the new codes, you can use PrawOAuth2Mini.get_access_codes method:

# `oauth_helper` is an instance of `PrawOAuth2Mini`
oauth_helper.get_access_codes()
# returns a dictionary
# {'access_token': 'E...N', 'refresh_token': 'F...R'}

How to handle sensitive information¶

I have mentioned earlier that you should never make app_key, app_secret, access_token and refresh_token public. These are like credentials of your (or your bot’s) Reddit account. So you should keep them super secret.

There are two ways to handle them in code. You can save them in a python file, however you have to make sure that you are not adding that file to version control. For example, if you are using Git, then make sure you gitignore the said file.

# .gitignore
tokens.py

Another way would be to use Environment variables. Once you have retrieved the tokens, set the environment variables by running following in your terminal:

$export APP_KEY=3...Y
$export APP_SECRET=L...T
$export ACCESS_TOKEN=E...N
$export REFRESH_TOKEN=F...R

And make use of these in your script:

# tokens.py
import os

app_key = os.getenv('APP_KEY')
app_secret = os.getenv('APP_SECRET')
access_token = os.getenv('ACCESS_TOKEN')
refresh_token = os.getenv('REFRESH_TOKEN')

When to use `refresh`¶

NOTE: This section is irrelevant if you are using latest version of prawoauth2.

The access_token expires for every 60 minutes (this is set by Reddit), so you can do refresh operation to get the new tokens. You don’t really need to keep track of expiry time, when the tokens are expired, OAuthInvalidToken exception will be thrown. Catch it and do refresh.

try:
    some_reddit_related_op()
except praw.errors.OAuthInvalidToken:
    # `oauth_helper` is an instance of `PrawOAuth2Mini`
    oauth_helper.refresh()

On the other hand, you can call the refresh before every operation, however it will get you new tokens only when old ones are about to expire.

try:
    oauth_helper.refresh()
    some_reddit_related_op()
except praw.errors.OAuthInvalidToken:
    oauth_helper.refresh()

If you want to refresh tokens even though if they are not expired, then pass parameter force to True, this prevents prawoauth2 to check if they are expired or not:

oauth_helper.refresh(force=True)

Keeping the bot running always¶

As explained in earlier section prawoauth2 has a mechanism to the refresh access token whenever it is expired, so that your bot is always healthy, functional and running. However it is also important to make sure that your bot is always running, whether some exception occurs in middle of operation or your machine/VPS/AWS instance reboots. I recommend you to use supervisord. supervisord will start your bot script whenever your machine is starts, it restarts the bot in case if bot exits due to error. It will also help you maintain logs.

Following is a sample supervisord config file for a Reddit bot:

[program:goodreads_reddit_bot]
command=/usr/bin/python3 /opt/goodreads_bot/main.py
directory=/opt/goodreads_bot/
stdout_logfile=/opt/goodreads_bot/log/stdout.log
stderr_logfile=/opt/goodreads_bot/log/stderr.log
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile_maxbytes=1MB
stdout_logfile_backups=10
stderr_logfile_maxbytes=1MB
autostart=true
autorestart=true