OAuth Authentication for Python CLI Tools: A Complete Guide

This repository contains code that was used for illustrating the article titled "OAuth Authentication for Python CLI Tools: A Complete Guide"

Setup

Register Your OAuth App

Pick your provider and register an OAuth application:

GitHub

1. Visit GitHub Developer Settings
2. Create a new OAuth App
3. Set the Authorization callback URL to http://localhost:8080/callback
4. Note your Client ID and Client Secret

Google

1. Visit Google Cloud Console
2. Create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID (application type: "Web application")
3. Add http://localhost:8080/callback to Authorized redirect URIs
4. Note your Client ID and Client Secret

Local setup

cd <your repo folder name>
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv sync

Running the code

Set provider credentials via environment variables:

# GitHub (default)
export GITHUB_CLIENT_ID="your_client_id"
export GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET="your_client_secret"
python oauth_cli.py

# Google
export GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID="your_client_id"
export GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET="your_client_secret"
python oauth_cli.py --provider google

Override credentials via command line

Either or both can be supplied as arguments, overriding the corresponding env var:

python oauth_cli.py --client-id 9876 --client-secret pqrs

All options

Flag	Default	Description
--provider	github	OAuth provider (github, google)
--client-id	—	Override env-var-based client ID
--client-secret	—	Override env-var-based client secret