Old auth endpoints shutting down

[jarib]

Looks like this change could impact this package:

https://support.withings.com/hc/en-us/articles/360016745358-Deprecating-access-and-refresh-tokens-endpoints

The "New response format" looks unfortunate given the reliance on httr's oauth.

[mathesong]

Urgh! Thanks so much for flagging this @jarib!

I'm not going to have time to get to this for a while. Anyone wanting to have a go at solving this is more than welcome to submit a PR! I'll label it as such.

[Stephaela]

I'm not good enough at programming to solve all of this myself, but I would like to offer my help if someone with better programming skills is looking for someone for doing small/easy subtasks or for testing something.

[jmhutch5]

I don't really understand oauth2.0, but it seemed to me like Withings API change in oauth2.0 endpoints ought to be able to be handled with some different arguments in httr::oauth2.0_token(), which is I believe where the underlying http GET and POST requests happen. But I played around with various permutations of this (see attached) and couldn't get it to work. We could really use the help of someone who understands exactly how oauth2.0 and httr work!!
my_withings_auth.txt

[Stephaela]

Although I thought that I'm not experienced enough in programming, I think that I have managed to get a valid access token and to get some data. I have not rewritten mathesong's code, but I have used my own different approach.

I don't now much about github, so I don't know if I am allowed to ask for the following in this place. I would like to find someone who gives my code (espescially the authorization and access stuff, because the get-functions are not really finished) a try, because I would like someone to test it because I think it might be better to do that before I even think about publishing it (or am I wrong?). Mathesong, if you feel angry because I ask for help for my code in your repository issues thread, please tell me and I will delete my request.

[mathesong]

Thanks so much for the contributions @jmhutch5 and @Stephaela ! As I mentioned, I'm a little bit overstretched at present, and I've not been able to find the time to resolve this issue, and won't have a lot of time to really get my hands dirty figuring it out. I'm also not super knowledgeable with the OAuth2.0 stuff myself, so it would probably take me a little while when I do find some time. So that's why I've labelled it with "help wanted" in case anyone either has more time than me, or is more experienced with this stuff and can more easily implement a fix.

@Stephaela : that is awesome to hear that you've managed to get something working!! I'm very open to any suggestions and contributions of any kind (and certainly not remotely upset: this package was a hobby project that I am quite fond of, but I'm just really busy with the day job and kids right now, and other things keep having to take higher priority on the to-do list). Could you share the code that you used to get it working? Preferably do so within a code chunk (you can get the markdown syntax by pressing the code button above the issue).

If that does the trick, it should make it much quicker and easier to implement the required changes to fix the package. In that case, I or someone else could try to fix everything based on your code; or else, if you'd prefer, you could submit a pull request fixing it yourself. Just let me know what you feel most comfortable with.

Thanks again to everyone for your remarks, comments and suggestions! It's been a really amazing feeling to see that there actually are people out there in the void actually using the package ☺️.

[emdockx]

@Stephaela did you end up testing (or having tested) your code? I have no experience with programming, let alone testing code, but I would be happy to learn by helping you with it. Any news on your side, @mathesong? Thanks for all the work you've being doing for this project btw!

[TroyHernandez]

I've been able to use curl from a Linux command line to get this done, but don't have enough experience with OAuth or the httr or curl packages to make it painless or to send a PR.

Presuming you've done the requisite developer setup here, I follow the instructions/variables from the docs here.

Apologies, my notes aren't perfect. I got it to work before I completely understood the process. And now I use a different refresh process to get my data. However, it should be enough to at least get your data into R.

Please read the instructions below fully before executing. I believe there is a 30-second timer that requires copy/pasting a code into one of the curl calls.

Get your authorization code

First you have to authorize your R "app". This will take you to the Withings dev website, click authorize (or whatever), and it will then take you to the localhost:1410 webpage, but DON'T CLOSE THAT PAGE JUST YET!

curl https://account.withings.com/oauth2_user/authorize2?response_type=code&client_id=Your_Client_ID_Here&state=Any_Old_AlphaNumeric_String_For_Security&scope=user.metrics,user.info,user.activity&redirect_uri=http://localhost:1410/

Copy and save your authorization code (i.e. access token) and refresh token

The tokens are appended to the redirect uri url; i.e. http://localhost:1410/ACCESS_AND_REFRESH_TOKEN_HERE

Get your access token

curl --data "action=requesttoken&grant_type=authorization_code&client_id=Your_Client_ID_Here&client_secret=Your_Client_Secret_Here&code=ACCESS_CODE_APPENDED_TO_REDIRECT_URI&redirect_uri=http://localhost:1410/" 'https://wbsapi.withings.net/v2/oauth2'

Get weight data (for example)

Some R code to pull the data into R.

dat <- jsonlite::fromJSON(system("curl --header \"Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE\" --data \"action=getmeas&meastype=1&category=1\" 'https://wbsapi.withings.net/measure'", intern = TRUE))

Refresh token (if needed)

The access token is only good for 3 hours (I believe it said 10800 seconds). If you want to access your data again in 3+ hours, you can't rerun the above the process. You need to use your refresh token to get a new access and refresh token:

curl --data "action=requesttoken&grant_type=refresh_token&client_id=Your_Client_ID_Here&client_secret=Your_Client_Secret_Here&refresh_token=Your_Refresh_Token_Here" 'https://wbsapi.withings.net/v2/oauth2'

The End

I hope this helps or moves the ball forward. If I get more time going forward, I'll try to clean this up.

[mathesong]

Hi @TroyHernandez ,

So sorry to have missed this! I've been super busy with a thousand things and this just slipped past me. This is so incredibly helpful - thank you SO much for the input!!

I'll try to get to incorporating this into the package as soon as I can, but I'm very short on time right now, so I can't guarantee that that will be soon. But I'll do my best to find a moment. In the meantime, if anyone else would like to give this a bash, I'd be over the moon to take any PRs on this front.

Thanks again, and so sorry for taking so long to get back to you!!
/G

[mathesong]

Ok, the package should be fixed now!! At long last...