Python LinkedIn

Python interface to the LinkedIn API

This library provides a pure Python interface to the LinkedIn Profile, Group, Company, Jobs, Search, Share, Network and Invitation REST APIs.

LinkedIn provides a service that lets people bring their LinkedIn profiles and networks with them to your site or application via their OAuth based API. This library provides a lightweight interface over a complicated LinkedIn OAuth based API to make it for python programmers easy to use.

Installation

You can install python-linkedin library via pip:

$ pip install python-linkedin

Authentication

LinkedIn REST API uses Oauth 2.0 protocol for authentication. In order to use the LinkedIn API, you have an application key and application secret. You can get more detail from here.

For debugging purposes you can use the credentials below. It belongs to my test application. Nothing's harmful.

KEY = 'wFNJekVpDCJtRPFX812pQsJee-gt0zO4X5XmG6wcfSOSlLocxodAXNMbl0_hw3Vl'
SECRET = 'daJDa6_8UcnGMw1yuq9TjoO_PMKukXMo8vEMo7Qv5J-G3SPgrAV0FqFCd0TNjQyG'

You can also get those keys from here.

LinkedIn redirects the user back to your website's URL after granting access (giving proper permissions) to your application. We call that url RETURN URL. Assuming your return url is http://localhost:8000, you can write something like this:

from linkedin import linkedin

API_KEY = 'wFNJekVpDCJtRPFX812pQsJee-gt0zO4X5XmG6wcfSOSlLocxodAXNMbl0_hw3Vl'
API_SECRET = 'daJDa6_8UcnGMw1yuq9TjoO_PMKukXMo8vEMo7Qv5J-G3SPgrAV0FqFCd0TNjQyG'
RETURN_URL = 'http://localhost:8000'

authentication = linkedin.LinkedInAuthentication(API_KEY, API_SECRET, RETURN_URL, linkedin.PERMISSIONS.enums.values())
print authentication.authorization_url  # open this url on your browser
application = linkedin.LinkedInApplication(authentication)

When you grant access to the application, you will be redirected to the return url with the following query strings appended to your RETURN_URL:

"http://localhost:8000/?code=AQTXrv3Pe1iWS0EQvLg0NJA8ju_XuiadXACqHennhWih7iRyDSzAm5jaf3R7I8&state=ea34a04b91c72863c82878d2b8f1836c"

This means that the value of the authorization_code is AQTXrv3Pe1iWS0EQvLg0NJA8ju_XuiadXACqHennhWih7iRyDSzAm5jaf3R7I8. After setting it by hand, we can call the .get_access_token() to get the actual token.

authentication.authorization_code = 'AQTXrv3Pe1iWS0EQvLg0NJA8ju_XuiadXACqHennhWih7iRyDSzAm5jaf3R7I8'
authentication.get_access_token()

Quick Usage From Python Interpreter

For testing the library using an interpreter, you can benefit from the test server.

from linkedin import server
application = server.quick_api(KEY, SECRET)

This will print a url to the screen. Go into this URL using a browser to grant access to the test application. After you do so, the method will return with an API object you can now use.

Profile API

The Profile API returns a member's LinkedIn profile. You can use this call to return one of two versions of a user's profile which are public profile and standart profile. For more information, check out the documentation.

application.get_profile()
{u'firstName': u'ozgur',
 u'headline': u'This is my headline',
 u'lastName': u'vatansever',
 u'siteStandardProfileRequest': {u'url': u'http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=46113651&authType=name&authToken=Egbj&trk=api*a101945*s101945*'}}

There are many field selectors that enable the client fetch more information from the API. All of them used by each API are listed here.

application.get_profile(selectors=['id', 'first-name', 'last-name', 'location', 'distance', 'num-connections', 'skills', 'educations'])
{u'distance': 0,
 u'educations': {u'_total': 1,
  u'values': [{u'activities': u'This is my activity and society field',
    u'degree': u'graduate',
    u'endDate': {u'year': 2009},
    u'fieldOfStudy': u'computer science',
    u'id': 42611838,
    u'notes': u'This is my additional notes field',
    u'schoolName': u'\u0130stanbul Bilgi \xdcniversitesi',
    u'startDate': {u'year': 2004}}]},
 u'firstName': u'ozgur',
 u'id': u'COjFALsKDP',
 u'lastName': u'vatansever',
 u'location': {u'country': {u'code': u'tr'}, u'name': u'Istanbul, Turkey'},
 u'numConnections': 13}

To fetch your connections, simply call:

connections = api.get_connections()

You can set/clear your status by calling .set_status() or .clear_status() methods. If you get False as the result, you can get the error by calling .get_error() method. Status message should be less than 140 characters. If it is too long, it is shortened. For more information, you can take a look at http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1007

result = api.set_status('This is my status.')
result = api.clear_status()

You can send a message to yourself or your connections' inboxes by simply calling .send_message() method. You can send your message at most 10 connections at a time. If you give more than ten IDs, the IDs after 10th one are ignored. For more information, you can take a look at http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1044

result = api.send_message('This is a subject', 'This is the body')
if result is False:
    print api.get_error()
u'Missing {mailbox-item/recipients/recipient} element'

You can set the parameter send_yourself to True, so you can send the message to yourself.

api.send_message('This is a subject', 'This is the body', ['ID1', 'ID2', 'ID3'], send_yourself=True)

You can send an invitation to your friend's email to invite them to join your LinkedIn network by simply calling .send_invitation() method.

result = api.send_invitation('This is a subject', 'Join to my network', 'Ozgur', 'Vatansever', '[email protected]')
print result
True

result = api.send_invitation('This is a subject', 'Join to my network', 'Ozgur', 'Vatansever', 'ozgurvt')
if result is False:
    print api.get_error()
u'Invalid argument(s): {emailAddress=invalid_email [ozgurvt]}'

Throttle Limits

LinkedIn API keys are throttled by default. You should take a look at http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1112 to get more information.