Authentication and Authorization

In order to use this library to retrieve information about athletes and actitivies, you will need authorization to do so.

This is a nice tutorial that has information about setting up a free app within STRAVA .

If you want a more technical overview, see the official documentation for a description of the OAuth2 protocol that Strava uses to authenticate users.

Requesting Authorization

The stravalib.client.Client class provides the stravalib.client.Client.authorization_url() method to build an authorization URL which can be clicked on by a user in order to grant your application access to their account data.

In its simplest form:

from stravalib import Client
client = Client()
url = client.authorization_url(client_id=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_ID,
                               redirect_uri='http://myapp.example.com/authorization')

Note that for development, you can use localhost or 127.0.0.1 as the redirect host.:

url = client.authorization_url(client_id=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_ID,
                               redirect_uri='http://127.0.0.1:5000/authorization')

Now you can display the resulting URL in your webapp to allow athletes to authorize your application to read their data. In the /authorization handler, you will need to exchange a temporary code for a temporary access token.

from stravalib import Client
code = request.args.get('code') # e.g.
client = Client()
token_response = client.exchange_code_for_token(client_id=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_ID,
                                              client_secret=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET,
                                              code=code)
access_token = token_response['access_token']
refresh_token = token_response['refresh_token']  # You'll need this in 6 hours

The resulting access_token is valid until the specified expiration time (6 hours, specified as unix epoch seconds expires_at field of returned token) or the user explicitly revokes application access. This token can be stored so that you can access the account data the future without requiring re-authorization.

Once you have an access token you can begin to perform operations from the perspective of that user.

from stravalib import Client
client = Client(access_token=STORED_ACCESS_TOKEN)
client.get_athlete() # Get current athlete details

To refresh the token you would call the stravalib.client.Client.refresh_access_token() method.

from stravalib import Client
code = request.args.get('code') # e.g.
client = Client()
token_response = client.refresh_access_token(client_id=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_ID,
                                      client_secret=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET,
                                      refresh_token=last_refresh_token)
new_access_token = token_response['access_token']

See the stravalib/stravalib directory for an example Flask application for fetching a Strava auth token.