Question

So I’m new to OAuth and Node.JS, but I have to create a Flickr bot to upload photos for a university project. From my understanding Node doesn’t have native support of multipart/formdata requests so I constructed the POST request manually.

I know the following code isn’t necessarily clean or best-practice, but it’s meant to be a one-off hack: the server is being requested by a single computer and only running for a few hours.

this.post = function(text, image) {
    var me = this;  
    if (me.authenticated) {
        fs.readFile(image, 'utf8', function(err,data) {
            if (err) throw new Error(err);                  
            var bound = (crypto.createHash('md5').update((Math.random()*9999999).toString()).digest('hex'));
            var req = http.request({host:'api.flickr.com',port:80,path:'/services/upload/',method:'POST',
                headers:{
                    'Content-Type':'multipart/form-data; boundary='+bound,
                    'Content-Length':data.length,
                    'Connection':'keep-alive'
                }
            }, function(res) {
                res.setEncoding('utf8');
                res.on('data', function(chunk) {
                    console.log(chunk);
                });
                console.log(me);
            });

            bound = "--"+bound;
            req.on('error', function(msg) {console.log('FLICKR UPLOAD ERROR: '+msg.message);});

            req.write(bound+"\r\n");
            req.write('Content-Disposition: form-data; name="api_key"\r\n\r\n'+flickroptions.key);
            req.write("\r\n"+bound+"\r\n");
            console.log("sending token "+me.token);
            req.write('Content-Disposition: form-data; name="auth_token"\r\n\r\n'+me.token);
            req.write("\r\n"+bound+"\r\n");
            req.write('Content-Disposition: form-data; name="api_sig"\r\n\r\n'+function() {
                var str = 'api_key'+flickroptions.key;
                str += 'api_token'+me.token;
                return crypto.createHash('md5').update(str).digest('hex');
            }());
            req.write("\r\n"+bound+"\r\n");
            req.write('Content-Disposition: form-data; name="photo"; filename="'+image+'"\r\n');
            req.write('Content-Type: image/jpeg\r\n\r\n');
            req.write(data);
            req.write('\r\n'+bound+"--"); req.end();
        });
    }
}

The above function generates a POST request more or less the same as recommended in the documentation. But for some reason, the request responds saying that auth_token is invalid.

I’m setting up authentication with the following two functions:

this.init = function(text,image) {
    var me = this;
    fauth.getOAuthRequestToken({'oauth_callback':'http://192.168.0.19:7001/flickr'}, function(err, token, secret, results) {
        if (err) console.log(err);      
        if (token && secret) {
            me.secret = secret; me.token = token;
            me.location = 'http://flicker.com/services/oauth/authorize?perms=write&oauth_token='+token;
        }
    });     
}

//?oauth_token&oauth_verifier
this.auth = function(token, verifier) {
    var me = this;
    this.token = token; this.verifier = verifier;
    fauth.getOAuthAccessToken(this.token, this.secret, this.verifier, function(err,token,secret,results) {
        if (err) {console.log(err); return;}
        me.results = results; me.authenticated = true;
        me.token = token;
        me.secret = secret;
        me.post('hello world', '../eyes/memory/eyes000001.jpg');
    });
}

Where this.init gets a Flickr authentication page and this.auth processes the redirected callback and then calls this.post. fauth is an instance of node-oauth. Am I missing a step in the process or have I messed up along the way? Thanks.

Answer 1

When using OAuth you no longer us the api_key, api_sig and auth_token parameters anymore, even for uploading. You should be using oauth_consumer_key, oauth_signature and oauth_token instead.

An OAuth Token is not a valid old style auth_token, and vice versa.

Check out my blog series on Flickr and OAuth for more details: http://www.wackylabs.net/2011/12/oauth-and-flickr-part-1/