[R-pkg-devel] Help with making a package for Twitter Authentication

[Jenny Bryan]

> On Nov 21, 2015, at 7:07 PM, Peter Meissner <retep.meissner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hey,
> 
> I am not sure, that this is the right list for questions that are 'only 
> mildly' related to package developement. Your question is more about 
> API/webscraping etc. . 
> 
> Maybe someone can point to a better place to post questions like this?. 

A good place to ask API wrapping questions is:

https://discuss.ropensci.org

> On Nov 20, 2015, at 9:11 AM, Robert M. Flight <rflight79 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Tushar,
> 
> I've created a Twitter App, and then saved the credentials for that app as
> an object that is part of an R package, using the four pieces of *api key,
> api secret, token key, token secret* that you get when you create a new
> app. I've posted a tutorial here:
> http://rmflight.github.io/posts/2014/06/r_job_notifications_twitter.html
> 
> The only thing I've found is that with new versions of some packages I may
> have to regenerate the object and save it with the package.
> 
> Note that this method *should only be used with personal packages*, and the
> credential object should never go into version control!

While this may not be true for Twitter, there are many APIs where the app key
and “secret” don’t necessarily need to be kept super secret.

Yes, you would not want to put, e.g., actual access tokens in a package or
on GitHub. I’m NOT contradicting what Robert says above for his approach.

But it feels like package authors are overly conservative about building in
default apps that can facilitate first-time or casual use of an API from R.

— Jenny