Facebook API Question posted in
The official documentation for the Facebook APIs can be found here.

Retrieve Access Token with LinkedIn JS SDK to use in Back-end – Facebook api

Currently I have both Facebook and LinkedIn Oauth2 flow working fine. Because in some cases I don’t want the user to redirect to another page, I use the Facebook JS SDK that works fine, retrieving the access token and sending it to the server where I retrieve user data with REST calls.

Unfortunately, I’m not having success in doing the same with the LinkedIn JS SDK. The official documentation isn’t helpful at all in that regard: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/getting-started-js-sdk.

I retrieve user data in the server because it’s easy to forge fake data in the client side and send it to the server, so a client side solution for that is not an option.

If I try to use the token that I get in js in the REST API I get Invalid access token. (401)

There are several opened questions that doesn’t have any response (or a helpful response) here in SO:

2015-08-03 – No response:
Javascript: Linkedin Access TOken

2016-05-29 – No response:
can I get access token through LinknedIn JS SDK?

2016-08-31 – No helpful response (data is retrieved in the front-end):
How to Get Access Token Using LinkedIn API JavaScript SDK

2017-06-30 – No helpful response:
LinkedIn OAuth token with Javascript SDK

In the below question, there is a comment that says what I’m already guessing:

[…] Honestly I think the JS API is completely useless like this
because if you can’t verify/use the token server-side you basically
cannot trust any of the information.

2015-07-22 – No helpful response (data is retrieved in the front-end):
get linkedin Access Token with JavaScript SDK

There’s some information about exchanging the Javascript API tokens with a REST API OAuth token, but in the references I’ve found the links are broken (and it would be impractical to do this, depending on the complexity, instead of using the token directly, like in the Facebook JS SDK):

http://developer.linkedin.com/documents/exchange-jsapi-tokens-rest-api-oauth-tokens
https://developer-programs.linkedin.com/documents/exchange-jsapi-tokens-rest-api-oauth-tokens

So, I would like to know if there is some way to login with LinkedIn using the JS SDK and retrieve the user data in the back-end using REST calls (like I do in the Oauth2 flow), hopefully with official docs.

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    I’ve been struggling with the same issue for some time, this is the way I solved it (not using the JS SDK): Linkedin data flow

    Step 1: you send your user to the LinkedIn login page, in the redirect_uri param use an endpoint to handle all the logic related to LinkedIn.

    Step 2: When the user finishes login in, Linkedin is going to send a GET request to that endpoint, this request will have an “Authorization Token”, this token is just a temporal token and it won’t allow you to get your user’s data.

    Step 3: Use the Authorization Token you just received and send a post request to Linkedin

    Step 4: Linkedin will send you back an Access Token (this is the one you are looking for), now you can request all the information you want

    Step 5: Redirect your user back to your web app.

    The structure of the request as well of the anchor tag params are available here: https://developer.linkedin.com/docs/oauth2

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  2. 0

    I’ve had the same problem and the only way I found to use the JS token was to add the header oauth_token instead of an Authorization Bearer header:

    POST https://api.linkedin.com/v1/people/~:(id,firstName,lastName,picture-url,email-address)?format=json
Headers {
  'oauth_token': JS_TOKEN
}

    The JS_TOKEN I’m reading on frontend from IN.ENV.auth.oauth_token.

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