Twitter OAUTH and a Win32 EXE Desktop Application

Question

I have been coding against a Delphi EXE (win32 desktop app) to access twitter and do certain functions. It used to use Basic authentication with the api limitation. I know I have to convert this to OAuth. I have been reading over the documentation trying to determine the best approach. I understand the best method is the Web browser with a call back url. I also know that Twitter includes a Pin Based (oob) authentication method. I figured this was the route to go with this application, but I want to make sure since that is not seamless. It requires the user to go external to the application and get a pin number. It also is not as secure since the access token returned never expires.

I am using Indy v10 components to do the GET/POST operations, so I am wondering if there is a way to do this using them and being able to do a callback and not use the Pin authentication method.

Can anyone help me?

Also I've been trying to get Chuck Beasley's Twitter Class working in Delphi 7 with Indy v10 and I've been having trouble. IdObjs and Idsys don't exist anymore. Has anyone got this class to work with my scenario? Thanks, David

Answer 1

OAuth is a standard used for Web applications, its text is liberally littered with the word 'agent', meaning a browser. The best solution IMHO is, if possible, to actually have a callback URL, meaning you have your own site which provides the service to back your application functionality. There are services that make this possible for third parties already, like JanRain. If these options are not feasible (meaning you cannot provide a true WWW site for the callback URL) not feasible, then your only option is indeed the out-of-band authentication, oob. Don't even think about having the OAuth authentication call back the app listening on some port, that is completely unreliable for 1) the vast majority of apps will sit behind some sort of NAT device (router, outbound proxy) which makes them unreachable from the OAuth prvider and 2) the OS firewall will block your incoming calls.

Answer 2

In the mean time, Beasly's Twitter class has been expanded/updated; see the latest incarnation

I've started a library that uses Synapse to access twitter. It can use OOB/PIN authentication and predefined oauth token/secret. It can be extended to use browser based auth. Currently written using FPC but should be adaptable to Delphi quite easily. FPCTwit code

Answer 3

You may wanna try my take on twitter, supports unicode as well unlike the other delphi implementations:

http://eden.fm/2011/02/27/twitter-library-for-delphi/

I don't use Indy though, but ICS