Twitter API returns error 215, Bad Authentication Data

Question

I am trying to call following Twitter's API to get a list of followers for a user.

http://api.twitter.com/1.1/followers/ids.json?cursor=-1&screen_name=username

And I am getting this error message in response.

{
    code = 215;
    message = "Bad Authentication data";
}

I can't seem to find the documentation related to this error code. Anyone has any idea about this error?

Solution 1

A very concise code without any other php file include of oauth etc. Please note to obtain following keys you need to sign up with https://dev.twitter.com and create application.

<?php
$token = 'YOUR_TOKEN';
$token_secret = 'YOUR_TOKEN_SECRET';
$consumer_key = 'CONSUMER_KEY';
$consumer_secret = 'CONSUMER_SECRET';
$host = 'api.twitter.com';
$method = 'GET';
$path = '/1.1/statuses/user_timeline.json'; // api call path
$query = array( // query parameters
    'screen_name' => 'twitterapi',
    'count' => '5'
);
$oauth = array(
    'oauth_consumer_key' => $consumer_key,
    'oauth_token' => $token,
    'oauth_nonce' => (string)mt_rand(), // a stronger nonce is recommended
    'oauth_timestamp' => time(),
    'oauth_signature_method' => 'HMAC-SHA1',
    'oauth_version' => '1.0'
);
$oauth = array_map("rawurlencode", $oauth); // must be encoded before sorting
$query = array_map("rawurlencode", $query);
$arr = array_merge($oauth, $query); // combine the values THEN sort
asort($arr); // secondary sort (value)
ksort($arr); // primary sort (key)
// http_build_query automatically encodes, but our parameters
// are already encoded, and must be by this point, so we undo
// the encoding step
$querystring = urldecode(http_build_query($arr, '', '&'));
$url = "https://$host$path";
// mash everything together for the text to hash
$base_string = $method."&".rawurlencode($url)."&".rawurlencode($querystring);
// same with the key
$key = rawurlencode($consumer_secret)."&".rawurlencode($token_secret);
// generate the hash
$signature = rawurlencode(base64_encode(hash_hmac('sha1', $base_string, $key, true)));
// this time we're using a normal GET query, and we're only encoding the query params
// (without the oauth params)
$url .= "?".http_build_query($query);
$url=str_replace("&","&",$url); //Patch by @Frewuill
$oauth['oauth_signature'] = $signature; // don't want to abandon all that work!
ksort($oauth); // probably not necessary, but twitter's demo does it
// also not necessary, but twitter's demo does this too
function add_quotes($str) { return '"'.$str.'"'; }
$oauth = array_map("add_quotes", $oauth);
// this is the full value of the Authorization line
$auth = "OAuth " . urldecode(http_build_query($oauth, '', ', '));
// if you're doing post, you need to skip the GET building above
// and instead supply query parameters to CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS
$options = array( CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array("Authorization: $auth"),
                  //CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $postfields,
                  CURLOPT_HEADER => false,
                  CURLOPT_URL => $url,
                  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
                  CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER => false);
// do our business
$feed = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($feed, $options);
$json = curl_exec($feed);
curl_close($feed);
$twitter_data = json_decode($json);
foreach ($twitter_data as &$value) {
   $tweetout .= preg_replace("/(http:\/\/|(www\.))(([^\s<]{4,68})[^\s<]*)/", '<a href="http://$2$3" target="_blank">$1$2$4</a>', $value->text);
   $tweetout = preg_replace("/@(\w+)/", "<a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/\\1\" target=\"_blank\">@\\1</a>", $tweetout);
   $tweetout = preg_replace("/#(\w+)/", "<a href=\"http://search.twitter.com/search?q=\\1\" target=\"_blank\">#\\1</a>", $tweetout);
}
echo $tweetout;
?>

Regards

Solution 2

The only solution I've found so far is:

• Create application in twitter developer panel
• Authorize user with your application (or your application in user account) and save "oauth_token" and "oauth_token_secret" which Twitter gives you. Use TwitterOAuth library for this, it's pretty easy, see examples coming with library.

• Using this tokens you can make authenticated requests on behalf of user. You can do it with the same library.

  // Arguments 1 and 2 - your application static tokens, 2 and 3 - user tokens, received from Twitter during authentification  
  $connection = new TwitterOAuth(TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY, TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET, $tokens['oauth_token'], $tokens['oauth_token_secret']);  
  $connection->host = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/'; // By default library uses API version 1.  
  $friendsJson = $connection->get('/friends/ids.json?cursor=-1&user_id=34342323');  
  

This will return you list of user's friends.

Solution 3

FOUND A SOLUTION - using the Abraham TwitterOAuth library. If you are using an older implementation, the following lines should be added after the new TwitterOAuth object is instantiated:

$connection->host = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/";
$connection->ssl_verifypeer = TRUE;
$connection->content_type = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded';

The first 2 lines are now documented in Abraham library Readme file, but the 3rd one is not. Also make sure that your oauth_version is still 1.0.

Here is my code for getting all user data from 'users/show' with a newly authenticated user and returning the user full name and user icon with 1.1 - the following code is implemented in the authentication callback file:

session_start();
require ('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');
require ('twitteroauth/config.php');
$consumer_key = '****************';
$consumer_secret = '**********************************';
$to = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret);
$tok = $to->getRequestToken('http://exampleredirect.com?twitoa=1');
$token = $tok['oauth_token'];
$secret = $tok['oauth_token_secret'];
//save tokens to session
$_SESSION['ttok'] = $token;
$_SESSION['tsec'] = $secret;
$request_link = $to->getAuthorizeURL($token,TRUE);
header('Location: ' . $request_link);

The following code then is in the redirect after authentication and token request

if($_REQUEST['twitoa']==1){
    require ('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');
    require_once('twitteroauth/config.php');
    //Twitter Creds
    $consumer_key = '*****************';
    $consumer_secret = '************************************';
    $oauth_token = $_GET['oauth_token']; //ex Request vals->http://domain.com/twitter_callback.php?oauth_token=MQZFhVRAP6jjsJdTunRYPXoPFzsXXKK0mQS3SxhNXZI&oauth_verifier=A5tYHnAsbxf3DBinZ1dZEj0hPgVdQ6vvjBJYg5UdJI
    $ttok = $_SESSION['ttok'];
    $tsec = $_SESSION['tsec'];
    $to = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $ttok, $tsec);
    $tok = $to->getAccessToken();
    $btok = $tok['oauth_token'];
    $bsec = $tok['oauth_token_secret'];
    $twit_u_id = $tok['user_id'];
    $twit_screen_name = $tok['screen_name'];
    //Twitter 1.1 DEBUG
    //print_r($tok);
    //echo '<br/><br/>';
    //print_r($to);
    //echo '<br/><br/>';
    //echo $btok . '<br/><br/>';
    //echo $bsec . '<br/><br/>';
    //echo $twit_u_id . '<br/><br/>';
    //echo $twit_screen_name . '<br/><br/>';
    $twit_screen_name=urlencode($twit_screen_name);
    $connection = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $btok, $bsec);
    $connection->host = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/";
    $connection->ssl_verifypeer = TRUE;
    $connection->content_type = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded';
    $ucontent = $connection->get('users/show', array('screen_name' => $twit_screen_name));
    //echo 'connection:<br/><br/>';
    //print_r($connection);
    //echo '<br/><br/>';
    //print_r($ucontent);
    $t_user_name = $ucontent->name;
    $t_user_icon = $ucontent->profile_image_url;
    //echo $t_user_name.'<br/><br/>';
    //echo $t_user_icon.'<br/><br/>';
}

It took me way too long to figure this one out. Hope this helps someone!!

Solution 4

The answer by Gruik worked for me in the below thread.

{Excerpt | Zend_Service_Twitter - Make API v1.1 ready}

with ZF 1.12.3 the workaround is to pass consumerKey and consumerSecret in oauthOptions option, not directrly in the options.

    $options = array(
        'username' => /*...*/,
        'accessToken' => /*...*/,
        'oauthOptions' => array(
            'consumerKey' => /*...*/,
            'consumerSecret' => /*...*/,
        )
    );

Solution 5

UPDATE: Twitter API 1 is now deprecated. Refer to above answer.

Twitter 1.1 does not work with that syntax (when I wrote this answer). Needs to be 1, not 1.1. This will work:

http://api.twitter.com/1/followers/ids.json?cursor=-1&screen_name=username

View more solutions

Comments

[RCNeil]

A lot of us are in the same boat. Were you able to resolve this? I'd love to see a solution for 1.1 since 1.0 is being deprecated.

[Dip Dhingani]

Yeah that's correct. But that's because Twitter's Documentation suggested me to do so. (dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/followers/ids). They said that version 1 is deprecated and I need to move to 1.1. Version 1 works for sure for this web service. But I was confused why 1.1 isn't working for me?

[K. Weber]

Version 1 will be deprecated in 6 months counting from march 2013 so I'd go for version 1.1

[K. Weber]

Testing different OAuth libraries I stick to Twitter Async, just changing this line protected $apiVersion = '1.1'; in file EpiTwitter.php works fine for Twitter API version 1.1

[qasimzee]

Twitter API 1 is deprecated

[itsazzad]

The Twitter REST API v1 is no longer active. Please migrate to API v1.1. dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/overview.

[moluv00]

Referencing a documentation site doesn't really answer the question.

[strangerstudios]

@moluv00 OP said: "I can't seem to find the documentation related to this error code."

[Brice Favre]

Why did you post a general link. This is not an answer.

[t q]

im getting {"errors":[{"message":"Bad Authentication data","code":215}]}

[alejosoft]

@tq: Look at this answer: stackoverflow.com/questions/12684765/…

[lubosdz]

This works because of "CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER = false". We have traced down that it is cURL SSL certificate verification error, that makes Twitter library always return empty response.