I'm looking for a vanilla PHP-based walkthrough of using oAuth.

February 20, 2013 8:03 PM

I understand the basic concept of oAuth, but I don't understand how to implement it, from a line-by-line standpoint. I'm looking for a basic walkthrough of how to leverage oAuth to authenticate a PHP-powered application to access a user's data. I'd highly prefer the walk-through not explain how to use oAuth to work with any particular service (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, FitBit), but rather that it keep the walkthrough pretty vanilla. I would classify myself as being an intermediate PHP developer. Does such a walkthrough exist?
posted by JPowers to computers & internet (4 answers total)

Can we assume you read this already?
posted by empath at 8:06 PM on February 20

empath: Yes. I've read through the PHP.net information. I think PHP.net is really great for learning relatively simple functions and basic PHP concepts, but not great (at least for me) at explaining relatively complex, multi-step stuff. So, bottom-line, it's not helping.
posted by JPowers at 8:15 PM on February 20

Googling for 'site:dzone.com php oauth' turns up many likely tutorials such as this, but I would just use a library like this or this.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:31 PM on February 20

I cannot speak to anything regarding PHP and oAuth, but I don't think you'll find much luck on a real vanilla oAuth walkthrough because there's not much of an actual standard being used in practice. Everyone seems to have developed their own little idiosyncratic versions of oAuth and what works with one provider often doesn't with another.

The working specs might be of some assistance in getting a handle on the whole process, though.
posted by ndfine at 8:15 AM on February 21