Headless auth?

[dougthor42]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I run this using a headless host / one without access to a web browser (eg: I'm SSH'd into a different machine).

Describe the solution you'd like
When authenticating using the Authorization Code Flow, print the auth url in the terminal. This allows the user to copy it into a browser manually. Then wait for the user to paste the secret into the terminal.

Describe alternatives you've considered
For now I just have to copy my code to a non-headless (headfull?) machine and run it from there.

Additional context
Headless auth was also mentioned in the 3.0 ideas issue #652 (comment)

[aymather]

@dougthor42 instead of doing a workaround just for the authentication flow in your headless environment, perform the auth flow once locally (i.e. in an environment where you can get redirected to a browser) which will create a .cache file for you. Then just move that file to your headless environment (i.e. the place you're ssh'ed into) and it should work without needing to authenticate every time because it can pull the token data from your .cache file.

[twointum]

@dougthor42 instead of doing a workaround just for the authentication flow in your headless environment, perform the auth flow once locally (i.e. in an environment where you can get redirected to a browser) which will create a .cache file for you. Then just move that file to your headless environment (i.e. the place you're ssh'ed into) and it should work without needing to authenticate every time because it can pull the token data from your .cache file.

Hi! Where exactly does that .cache file go? I have the same issue and it's driving me crazy. My remote server is running a python virtual environment that is running Apache Airflow.

[dougthor42]

Looks like the same dir as the file being run. For example, in https://github.com/dougthor42/spotify-favorites-fixer:

$ dthor@odin /c/dev/spotify-favorites-fixer (master): tree -L 1
spotify-favorites-fixer/
├── .cache    # <-- Here it is!
├── ...
├── .venv/
├── ...
├── fix_spotify_favorites.py
├── ...
└── test_fix_spotify_favorites.py

The file itself has this pattern:

{
  "access_token": "REDACTED",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expires_in": 3600,
  "refresh_token": "REDACTED",
  "scope": "user-library-modify user-library-read",
  "expires_at": 1708462345
}

[dieser-niko]

Hi there, sorry for the late reply. Most auth managers in spotipy have an open_browser parameter, you can use it like this: spotipy/examples/headless.py

[dieser-niko]

Closing as this issue seems to be resolved.