Yelp authentication setup
Things you will need before you start:
- A Yelp account. The acount must have a confirmed email address. If you do not have one, this process will fail.
Follow each of these steps:
1. Go to the Yelp development homepage: https://www.yelp.com/developers/
2. Click on the link that says Get Started. If you are not logged in, it will prompt you to login. If you are logged in, it will ask you to provide several pieces of information:
- Your website URL
- Enter http://www.example.com
- How you will use the API
- Practice data analysis using Python
- Industry
- Select "Other" from drop-down; Enter "academic" in the box below.
- Terms of Use
- Read and, if you agree, click on the the checkbox marking that you have read and accept the Yelp API terms of use.
3. If you are not looking at it already, you can click on the menu item on the left that says Manage API access. The center of the page should have a heading that says "API v2.0" and it should list three random collections of letters:
- Consumer Key
- Consumer Secret
- Token
- Token Secret
You will need all of these in order to have your Python program work with Yelp.
Copy and paste each of these into a document or text file so that you have them all and know which ones are which. Bring this information to the Saturday session.
Keep this material secret. Your access token and access token secret will allow anybody who has it to post to Yelp as you and to control your account. It is equivalent to your Yelp username and password so please be as careful with it as you would be with your Yelp password!
