nyholm / linkedin-api-client

A library to connect with LinkedIn API. Perfect if you are looking for an API client or SDK for LinkedIn

LinkedIn API client in PHP

A PHP library to handle authentication and communication with LinkedIn API. The library/SDK helps you to get an access token and when authenticated it helps you to send API requests. You will not get everything for free though... You have to read the LinkedIn documentation to understand how you should query the API.

To get an overview what this library actually is doing for you. Take a look at the authentication page from the API docs.

Features

Here is a list of features that might convince you to choose this LinkedIn client over some of our competitors'.

• Flexible and easy to extend
• Developed with modern PHP standards
• Not developed for a specific framework.
• Handles the authentication process
• Respects the CSRF protection
• More than 85% test coverage.
• 800 lines of code, 650 lines of comments.

Installation

Install it with Composer.

php composer.phar require happyr/linkedin-api-client:dev-master

If you are updating form a previous version make sure to read the upgrade documentation.

Usage

In order to use this API client (or any other LinkedIn clients) you have to register your application with LinkedIn to receive an API key. Once you've registered your LinkedIn app, you will be provided with an API Key and Secret Key.

LinkedIn login

This example below is showing how to login with LinkedIn.

<?php

/**
 * This demonstrates how to authenticate with LinkedIn and send api requests
 */

/*
 * First you need to make sure you've used composers auto load. You have is probably 
 * already done this before. You usually don't bother..
 */
//require_once "vendor/autoload.php";

$linkedIn=new Happyr\LinkedIn\LinkedIn('app_id', 'app_secret');

if ($linkedIn->isAuthenticated()) {
    //we know that the user is authenticated now. Start query the API
    $user=$linkedIn->get('v1/people/~:(firstName,lastName)');
    echo "Welcome ".$user['firstName'];

    exit();
} elseif ($linkedIn->hasError()) {
    echo "User canceled the login.";
    exit();
}

//if not authenticated
$url = $linkedIn->getLoginUrl();
echo "<a href='$url'>Login with LinkedIn</a>";

How to post on LinkedIn wall

The example below shows how you can post on a users wall. The access token is fetched from the database.

$linkedIn=new Happyr\LinkedIn\LinkedIn('app_id', 'app_secret');
$linkedIn->setAccessToken('access_token_from_db');

$options = array('json'=>
    array(
        'comment' => 'Im testing Happyr LinkedIn client! https://github.com/Happyr/LinkedIn-API-client',
        'visibility' => array(
            'code' => 'anyone'
        )
    )
);

$result = $linkedIn->post('v1/people/~/shares', $options);

var_dump($result);

// Prints: 
// array (size=2)
//   'updateKey' => string 'UPDATE-01234567-0123456789012345678' (length=35)
//   'updateUrl' => string 'https://www.linkedin.com/updates?discuss=&scope=01234567&stype=M&topic=0123456789012345678&type=U&a=mVKU' (length=104)

You may of course do the same in xml. Use the following options array.

$options = array(
'format' => 'xml',
'body' => '<share>
 <comment>Im testing Happyr LinkedIn client! https://github.com/Happyr/LinkedIn-API-client</comment>
 <visibility>
   <code>anyone</code>
 </visibility>
</share>');

Configuration

The api options

The third parameter of LinkedIn::api is an array with options. They will eventually be past to a Request client but before that we do some modifications. Below is a table of array keys that you may use.

Option name	Description
body	The body of a HTTP request. Put your xml string here.
debug	This will echo the all the request and response headers. (Works with the Guzzle client only)
format	Set this to 'json', 'xml' or 'simple_xml' to override the default value.
headers	This is HTTP headers to the request
json	This is an array with json data that will be encoded to a json string. Using this option you do need to specify a format.
query	This is an array with query parameters

If you are using the GuzzleRequest (default) you may want to have a look at its documentation to find out what more options that are available.

Changing format

The default format when communicating with LinkedIn API is json. This means that you will get an array back as a response when you call LinkedIn::api. It is easy to change the format.

// By constructor argument
$linkedIn=new Happyr\LinkedIn\LinkedIn('app_id', 'app_secret', 'xml');

// By setter
$linkedIn->setFormat('xml');

// Set format for just one request
$linkedIn->get('v1/people/~:(firstName,lastName)', array('format'=>'xml'));

There is one exception to the format option: When you specifying $options['json'=>...] then the format will always be json.

Below is a table that specifies what format returns what when you call LinkedIn::api.

Format	Return value
json	An assosiative array
xml	The XML response body as a string
simple_xml	A SimpleXMLElement. See PHP manual.

Use different Request or Session classes

You might want to use an other storage than the default SessionStorage. If you are using Laravel you are more likely to inject the IlluminateSessionStorage.

$linkedIn=new Happyr\LinkedIn\LinkedIn('app_id', 'app_secret');
$linkedIn->setStorage(new IlluminateSessionStorage());

You can inject any class implementing DataStorageInterface. You can also inject different request and url generator classes.

Using different scopes

If you want to define special scopes when you authenticate the user you should specify them when you are generating the login url. If you don't specify scopes LinkedIn will use the default scopes that you have configured for the app.

$scope = 'r_fullprofile,r_emailaddress,w_share';
//or 
$scope = array('rw_groups', 'r_contactinfo', 'r_fullprofile', 'w_messages');

$url = $linkedIn->getLoginUrl(array('scope'=>$scope));
echo "<a href='$url'>Login with LinkedIn</a>";

Framework integration

See how I integrated this with Symfony2.