TwitteR setup_twitter_oauth() failing

Question

I was following the vignette for the package, updated and loaded all necessary packages, seemed like it would be a pretty straight-forward process to authenticate. Instead, I get an error

> setup_twitter_oauth(consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token, access_secret)
[1] "Using direct authentication"
Error in check_twitter_oauth() : OAuth authentication error:
This most likely means that you have incorrectly called setup_twitter_oauth()'

My paraphrased and redacted program looks more-or-less like this.

library("twitteR")
download.file(url="http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem", destfile="cacert.pem") #read this was necessary for Windows machines
consumer_key <- 'abc'
consumer_secret <- 'abc'
access_token <- '123-abc'
access_secret <- 'abc'
setup_twitter_oauth(consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_token, access_secret)

I read a lot of the other SO questions on this topic, nothing solved my issue (most of them used the old authentication process anyway). I'm trying to create a wordcloud following this tutorial.

Solution 1

Just (install and) load the package 'base64enc'.

Solution 2

I had to do the following settings to make this work

package versions : base64enc_0.1-3 httr_1.2.1 twitteR_1.1.8

installed twitteR using command: devtools::install_github("jrowen/twitteR", ref = "oauth_httr_1_0")

And i had an existing app which didnt work so i went ahead a created a new app on twitter.

This combination works for me

Solution 3

Just check your firewall settings and allow R through.

I tried all the the different solutions mentioned regarding packages , etc. None of them worked. I finally found that it is nothing but a simple firewall issue. I recommend that everybody who faces this issue first check their firewall settings. Make sure that R is added in the list of applications allowed through the firewall. This should solve the issue.

Solution 4

install.packages("base64enc") was what solved this issue for me.

Solution 5

I tried all the suggestions here but surprisingly none worked for me. Somebody could be going through the same situation as I did so I answer with what worked for me- it seems that the problem was with direct authentication, so I followed the following steps(this requires one to have the openssl package) installed and loaded along with the twitteR package;

Ensure you have created your twitter API and have the consumerkey and consumerSecret codes, and preferably remain logged into twitter with your default web browser

packages <- c("twitteR", "openssl")
### checking if packages are already installed and installing if not
for(i in packages){
    if(!(i %in% installed.packages()[, "Package"])){
        install.packages(i)
    }
library(i, character.only = TRUE) ## load packages
}

setup_twitter_oauth(consumer_key, consumer_secret) ## do not input the access_token and access_secret

This is going to open up your default browser with the successful authentication message. You can close the browser now and continue exploring tweets with R.

View more solutions

Comments

[Molx]

This used to work just fine for me, but I just opened my script and received the same error. Are you running R 3.2.1?

[Molx]

Actually, it seems that the problem is caused by an update to the httr package. An issue has already been created on TwitteR github repo, with a workaround.

[Tyler Beason]

@Molx thanks for the info! the workaround worked perfectly and I have successfully authenticated using the program above

[API]

@AmitKohli Could you be more specific? What message/output did you see when you tried the one I listed above? And what did you encounter before you tried it?

[Amit Kohli]

I get the same error: Error in check_twitter_oauth() : OAuth authentication error: This most likely means that you have incorrectly called setup_twitter_oauth()'. Does it make a difference how I answer this question?:"Using direct authentication" Use a local file to cache OAuth access credentials between R sessions?

[Amit Kohli]

@Alex_Feng I finally solved the problem by reinstalling latest dev version of TwitteR, latest cran version of httr, and latest cran version of base64enc. Cheers.

[API]

@AmitKohli thanks for sharing. I think what you did was consistent with what I did. I updated all other packages via cran, and then installed the dev version of TwitteR by the code I listed above (and here as well): devtools::install_github("jrowen/twitteR", ref = "oauth_httr_1_0")

[Peter Ellis]

This worked for me. I had the identical problem on Linux but not Windows - just loading up the library on the linux box solved it.

[Jayden]

Solved my problem on Windows.

[cloudscomputes]

In my solution, you need a proxy like psiphon, then set its port manually to 61387

[Hamed Baziyad]

Please check your sentences