How to login using Reddit's API?

Question

Am trying to access my Reddit user's account by using the Reddit API - POST login Endpoint listed on its API page.

I tried this:

curl -i -X POST -d '{"user":"myusername", "passwd":"mypassword", "rem":"true" }' http://www.reddit.com/api/login

But it said wrong password (I logged into the website with the same credentials so I don't know what's wrong):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
{
    "jquery": 
             [[0, 1, "call", ["body"]], [1, 2, "attr", "find"], 
              [2, 3, "call", [".status"]], [3, 4, "attr", "hide"], 
              [4, 5, "call", []],  [5, 6, "attr", "html"], 
              [6, 7, "call", [""]], [7, 8, "attr", "end"], 
              [8, 9, "call", []], [0, 10, "attr", "find"], 
              [10, 11, "call", [".error.WRONG_PASSWORD.field-passwd"]], 
              [11, 12, "attr", "show"], [12, 13, "call", []], 
              [13, 14, "attr", "text"], [14, 15, "call", ["invalid password"]], 
              [15, 16, "attr", "end"], [16, 17, "call", []]]
 }

However, this works:

curl -i -c Cookie.txt -d '{"user":"myusername", "passwd":"mypassword" , "rem":"true"}' http://www.reddit.com/api/login

Yields:

{
     "jquery": 
              [[0, 1, "call", ["body"]], 
               [1, 2, "attr", "find"], 
               [2, 3, "call", [".status"]], 
               [3, 4, "attr", "hide"], 
               [4, 5, "call", []], 
               [5, 6, "attr", "html"], 
               [6, 7, "call", [""]], 
               [7, 8, "attr", "end"], 
               [8, 9, "call", []], 
               [0, 10, "attr", "find"], 
               [10, 11, "call", [".error.RATELIMIT.field-vdelay"]], 
               [11, 12, "attr", "show"], 
               [12, 13, "call", []], 
               [13, 14, "attr", "text"], 
               [14, 15, "call", 
                 ["you are doing that too much. try again in 4 minutes."]],
               [15, 16, "attr", "end"], [16, 17, "call", []]]
}

This also works as well:

curl -b Cookie.txt http://www.reddit.com/api/me.json

Questions:

• Does anyone know how to login to Reddit using the Reddit API?

• Is there an easier way to pass credentials via an HTTP Post to login correctly?

• Why does it say invalid password from my initial curl?

Answer 1

The following is a proper example of how to use curl to login to reddit:

curl -duser=USERNAME -dpasswd=PASSWORD -dapi_type=json https://ssl.reddit.com/api/login

By passing api_type=json you get meaningful json output rather than reddit-specific jquery based output.

{"json": {"errors": [],
          "data": {"modhash": "<REMOVED>",
                   "cookie": "<REMOVED>"}
         }
}

Note that reddit also properly uses the set-cookie header so that a proper http client / library will take advantage of the session for subsequent requests.

Your example did not work because you were not properly sending the form parameters. The example that you thought might have worked, in-fact did not. You were receiving a rate-limit response for failing to login too many times.