Reddit.jl

Reddit API wrapper for Julia.

Prerequisites

Reddit account - A Reddit account is required to access Reddit's API. Create one at reddit.com.

Client ID & Client Secret - These two values are needed to access Reddit's API as a script application, which is currently the only aplication type supported by this package. If you don’t already have a client ID and client secret, follow Reddit’s First Steps Guide to create them.

User Agent - A user agent is a unique identifier that helps Reddit determine the source of network requests. To use Reddit’s API, you need a unique and descriptive user agent. The recommended format is: :: (by /u/). For example: android:com.example.myredditapp:v1.2.3 (by /u/kemitche). Read more about user-agents at Reddit’s API wiki page.

Installation

This package can be installed using Pkg:

using Pkg
Pkg.add("Reddit")

Project Status

This package is new and most of the planned functionality is yet to be implemented.

Usage

The Reddit module contains a Credentials type:

struct Credentials <: AbstractCredentials
    id::String
    secret::String
    useragent::String
    username::String
    password::String
end

The id, secret, and useragent fields correspond to the client ID, client secret, and user agent mentioned above in the prerequisites section. The username and password fields correspond to the username and password of the user associated with the script application.

Credentials can be manually created with Strings entered into the fields:

creds = Credentials("CLIENT_ID", "CLIENT_SECRET", "USER_AGENT", "USER_NAME", "PASSWORD")

The information required to create Credentials can be stored in an ini file. The default config file contains two clients named client1 and client2, with placeholders for each client's information.

[client1]
client_id=CLIENT_ID_1
client_secret=CLIENT_SECRET_1
user_agent=USER_AGENT_1
password=PASSWORD_1
username=USER_NAME_1

[client2]
client_id=CLIENT_ID_2
client_secret=CLIENT_SECRET_2
user_agent=USER_AGENT_2
password=PASSWORD_2
username=USER_NAME_2

The credentials() function can be used to generate Credentials from an ini file.

# read credentials from default config.ini
creds = credentials("client")

# read credentials from an alternate ini
creds = credentials("CLIENT_NAME", "PATH/TO/ALTERNATE.ini")

In order to access Reddit's API, the Credentials need to be authorized to receive an access token. The authorize() function can be used with Credentials to get an AuthorizedCredentials type, which contains the same fields as Credentials with the addition of a token field.

struct AuthorizedCredentials <: AbstractCredentials
    id::String
    secret::String
    useragent::String
    username::String
    password::String
    token::String
end

authcreds = authorize(creds)

The token() function can also be called with Credentials to get the access token without creating an AuthorizedCredentials type.

accesstoken = token(creds)

The AuthorizedCredentials can then be used in the various API call functions:

# get current user identity information
myinfo = me(authcreds)

# get karma breakdown for current user
mykarma = karma(authcreds)

# get number of subscribers for /r/julia
subcount = subscribers("Julia", authcreds)

# get Array of user's friends
f = friends(authcreds)

A set of AuthorizedCredentials can also be set as the default credentials using the default!() function. When the default credentials are set, the same API call functions can be used without specifying the credentials to use.

# get current user identity information
myinfo = me()

# get karma breakdown for current user
mykarma = karma()

# get number of subscribers for /r/julia
subcount = subscribers("Julia")

# get Array of user's friends
f = friends()