rtweet authentication not working for script running as a local job

[wrahool]

Problem

I have an R script that fetches the friends of a user. It reads the API consumer keys and access keys and secrets from an RData file, creates a new token, and then uses this token to fetch the friends of a user. When I run this script normally (for example, by clicking "source" on RStudio) it runs just fine. However, when I do "Source as Local Job" it doesn't work, giving an authentication error.

Expected behavior

I expect the authentication to happen even when the script is running as a local job (in the background)

Reproduce the problem

library(rtweet)

load("../tokens/twitter_tokens/token1.Rdata")

tk <- create_token(
  app = token_name,
  consumer_key = api_key,
  consumer_secret = api_secret_key,
  access_token = access_token_key,
  access_secret = access_token_secret
)

users <- c("cnn", "bbc")

for(u in users) {
  u_data <- lookup_users(u)
  u_friends <- get_friends(
    u,
    n = u_data$friends_count,
    retryonratelimit = TRUE,
    token = tk
  )
  
  save(u_friends, file = paste0("../friends/", u, ".Rdata"))
  
}

rtweet version

## copy/paste output
packageVersion("rtweet")

[1] ‘0.7.0’

Session info

## copy/paste output
sessionInfo()

R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19041)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252   
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252 LC_NUMERIC=C                          
[5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] forcats_0.5.0   stringr_1.4.0   dplyr_1.0.1     purrr_0.3.4     readr_1.3.1     tidyr_1.1.1     tibble_3.0.3   
 [8] ggplot2_3.3.2   tidyverse_1.3.0 rtweet_0.7.0   

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] tinytex_0.25     tidyselect_1.1.0 xfun_0.16        haven_2.3.1      colorspace_1.4-1 vctrs_0.3.2     
 [7] generics_0.0.2   blob_1.2.1       rlang_0.4.7      later_1.1.0.1    pillar_1.4.6     withr_2.2.0     
[13] glue_1.4.1       DBI_1.1.0        dbplyr_1.4.4     modelr_0.1.8     readxl_1.3.1     lifecycle_0.2.0 
[19] munsell_0.5.0    gtable_0.3.0     cellranger_1.1.0 rvest_0.3.6      httpuv_1.5.4     curl_4.3        
[25] fansi_0.4.1      broom_0.7.0      Rcpp_1.0.5       openssl_1.4.2    promises_1.1.1   backports_1.1.7 
[31] scales_1.1.1     jsonlite_1.7.0   fs_1.5.0         askpass_1.1      hms_0.5.3        stringi_1.4.6   
[37] grid_4.0.2       cli_2.0.2        tools_4.0.2      magrittr_1.5     crayon_1.3.4     pkgconfig_2.0.3 
[43] ellipsis_0.3.1   xml2_1.3.2       reprex_0.3.0     lubridate_1.7.9  assertthat_0.2.1 httr_1.4.2      
[49] rstudioapi_0.11  R6_2.4.1         compiler_4.0.2  

Token

## copy/paste output
rtweet::get_token()

<Token>
<oauth_endpoint>
 request:   https://api.twitter.com/oauth/request_token
 authorize: https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authenticate
 access:    https://api.twitter.com/oauth/access_token
<oauth_app> rsta******************
  key:    6j7I**********************************
  secret: <hidden>
<credentials> oauth_token, oauth_token_secret, user_id, screen_name

[llrs]

I think you overwrite the token when you load it and then create it. Also if it is on that path and you set the path on R.environ correctly it should be picked up by rtweet automatically. Perhaps on the local jobs it doesn't load the environment variables?

[hadley]

@llrs I have verified that local jobs are child processes so that env vars are forwarded. Given the absence of a reprex, no response from the original filer, and the fact that we're overhauling auth anyway, I'd suggest we close this issue.