Authentication and Authorization

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

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 permanent token.

from stravalib import Client
code = request.args.get('code') # e.g.
client = Client()
access_token = client.exchange_code_for_token(client_id=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_ID,
                                              client_secret=MY_STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET,
                                              code=code)

The resulting access_token is valid (until/unless access for your app is revoked by the user) and should be stored so that you can access the account data the future without re-authorizing.

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