Fixed Twitter Integration apps.twitter.com vs developer.twitter.com

[eva2000]

Affected version

1.5.19

For Twitter Integration https://apps.twitter.com/ is eventually going away and moving to developer.twitter.com

As of July 2018, you must apply for a Twitter developer account and be approved before you may create new apps. Once approved, you will be able to create new apps from developer.twitter.com.

For the near future, you can continue to manage existing apps here on apps.twitter.com. However, we will soon retire this site and consolidate all developer tools, API access, and app management within the developer portal at developer.twitter.com. You will be able to access and manage existing apps through that portal when we retire this site.

However the updated XF 1.5 instructions to add 2 callback urls for /register/twitter and /admin.php?tools/test-twitter callback url seem to only work for legacy apps.twitter.com app but with updated developer.twitter.com version of the created Twitter App, you can't set that 2nd call back url for /admin.php?tools/test-twitter callback as when you try to save changes, developer.twitter.com version will report invalid site url and not save the change.

 

[Chris D]

I won't repeat everything I said, but if you're interested in my feelings on these changes, you can read them here:
https://twittercommunity.com/t/oaut...s-on-apps-twitter-com/110416/8?u=chrisdeeming

This is most certainly a Twitter problem for Twitter to resolve, there's not a lot we can do. Hopefully, common sense will prevail and they'll remove some of the stringent URL validation they've added. Otherwise, frankly, supporting Twitter in XF1 or XF2 will simply not be possible going forward.

 

[Sim]

*sigh*

Twitter have been progressively increasing the restrictions on 3rd party usage of their ecosystem for some time now. Based on some of the decisions they've made in recent years, I really do get the feeling they resent other people taking advantage of their platform and wonder why they bother having an API at all.

As useful as it is (for those few people who actually do prefer to log in using Twitter) - I don't think I'd be terribly disappointed if we lost access to this functionality.

I'm sure these figures would differ somewhat on a more technical oriented community, but for our not-that-technical community of 14,000 members, we see only 81 using Twitter compared to 1200 using Google and 1100 using Facebook:



So about 0.6% of our members have associated their Twitter account with their forum profile, compared with 8.0% for Facebook and 8.9% Google. Around 15% of those Twitter users have also registered one or more other external auth providers too, so the actual number of affected users would be even lower for us.

I'd imagine the stats for a site like xenforo.com would be quite a bit higher in relation to Twitter auth usage.

 

[ge66]

How, where, did you check this usage?

 

[Triops]

looks like a sql query in phpmyadmin

 

[Sim]

How, where, did you check this usage?

Run the following query against your forum database:

SELECT provider, count(user_id) AS users FROM xf_user_external_auth GROUP BY provider

 

[eva2000]

I won't repeat everything I said, but if you're interested in my feelings on these changes, you can read them here:
https://twittercommunity.com/t/oaut...s-on-apps-twitter-com/110416/8?u=chrisdeeming

This is most certainly a Twitter problem for Twitter to resolve, there's not a lot we can do. Hopefully, common sense will prevail and they'll remove some of the stringent URL validation they've added. Otherwise, frankly, supporting Twitter in XF1 or XF2 will simply not be possible going forward.

Cheers @Chris D looks like something Twitter needs to sort out.

 

[rdn]

Run the following query against your forum database

Thanks for the query, I still got a lot of members using Twitter.

 

[Sim]

Thanks for the query, I still got a lot of members using Twitter.

View attachment 182267

Sure, in absolute terms, but relatively speaking, you have similar numbers to me:

• Me: Twitter:Facebook = 81/1122 = 7.2%
• You: Twitter:Facebook = 9755/173066 = 5.6%
• Me: Twitter:Google = 81/1234 = 6.6%
• You: Twitter:Google = 9755/135813 = 7.2%

... so it looks like you have roughly the same ratio of users using Twitter as I do, so my point still stands - it's not very widely used for logins.

 

[PaulB]

Even with > 1M members, social auth has never been particularly popular on our site, especially Twitter, which accounts for < 1k members.

 

[Chris D]

Twitter have now clarified that any authorized callback URL is acceptable as long as it doesn't contain a query string. The query string part is handled automatically. So the callback URLs required are as follows:

• <board URL>/index.php if you are using non-friendly URLs
• <board URL>/register/twitter/ if you are using friendly URLs
• <board URL>/admin.php if you wish to test the integration in the Admin CP
• <board URL>/connected_account.php if you are using XF2

We've updated the relevant manual pages and references to the new dashboard page in the software itself.

 

[snoopy5]

As of July 2018, you must apply for a Twitter developer account and be approved before you may create new apps. Once approved, you will be able to create new apps from developer.twitter.com.

For the near future, you can continue to manage existing apps here on apps.twitter.com. However, we will soon retire this site and consolidate all developer tools, API access, and app management within the developer portal at developer.twitter.com. You will be able to access and manage existing apps through that portal when we retire this site.

and

Twitter have now clarified that any authorized callback URL is acceptable as long as it doesn't contain a query string. The query string part is handled automatically. So the callback URLs required are as follows:

• <board URL>/index.php if you are using non-friendly URLs
• <board URL>/register/twitter/ if you are using friendly URLs
• <board URL>/admin.php if you wish to test the integration in the Admin CP
• <board URL>/connected_account.php if you are using XF2

We've updated the relevant manual pages and references to the new dashboard page in the software itself.

@Chris D

Could you please add both in the documentation of XF1.5x? It is not yet written there.