Connect with LinkedIn in java

February 9, 2013 Java, WebGWT7 Comments

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We needed to post LinkedIn updates in our gwt based application. LinkedIn-J is a java wrapper over LinkedIn API’s. We used this to post LinkedIn updates in our application.
We have also used signpost-core. It stands for simple oauth messages signing for java.
It exoposes a simple interface to sign HTTP requests using a given OAuth token and secret.

For getting this work we downloaded linkedin-j and signpost-core from the following location.
You can paste this jar in lib directory of your java based GWT application. Now our project is ready for using linkedin-j libraries.

Now the next step for calling any API method is to create the API client using the api key, api secret, access token, token secret.

final LinkedInApiClientFactory factory = LinkedInApiClientFactory.newInstance("consumer_key","consumer_secret");

final LinkedInApiClient client = factory.createLinkedInApiClient("access_key","access_token");

Thats it! now you can interact with linkedin.

All the methods in the library are divided into these categories.

1.To send updates on linkedIn profiles.

client.updateCurrentStatus("Your status");

2.Profile API
To fetch the profile of a person by ID.

Person profile = client.getProfileById(id);

System.out.println("Name:" + profile.getFirstName() + " " + profile.getLastName());
System.out.println("Headline:" + profile.getHeadline());
System.out.println("Summary:" + profile.getSummary());
System.out.println("Industry:" + profile.getIndustry());
System.out.println("Picture:" + profile.getPictureUrl());

3.Connections API
To get connections of the current user:

Connections connections = client.getConnectionsForCurrentUser();
System.out.println("Total connections fetched:" + connections.getTotal());

4.Network Updates API
To fetch network updates of the current user:

Network network = client.getNetworkUpdates(EnumSet.of(NetworkUpdateType.STATUS_UPDATE));
System.out.println("Total updates fetched:" + network.getUpdates().getTotal());

7 thoughts on “Connect with LinkedIn in java2 min read”

santosh says:

August 7, 2013 at 3:03 PM

I could not find consumer key and consumer secret using linkedln app.please help
tpp says:

August 14, 2013 at 9:05 PM

linkedin-j is not maintained. The author hasn’t updated it in months and it’s sorely lacking features available in updates to LinkedIn’s APIs.
Ashis says:

September 9, 2013 at 1:34 PM

I got: {API Key, Secret Key, OAuth User Token, OAuth User Secret}, used them as {consumer_key, consumer_secret, access_key, access_token} not sure if this was correct but getting Error.

Can any one guide what is the correct use of these two lines:
factory = LinkedInApiClientFactory.newInstance(consumer_key, consumer_secret); // Correct ??
client = factory.createLinkedInApiClient(OAuth_User_Token, OAuth_User_Secret);// Correct ??
Kirti Hudda says:

March 22, 2014 at 2:35 PM

Can anyone please tell me the function to follow some one on linkedin in Linkedin-j api??
Arshad says:

July 8, 2014 at 11:25 AM

I am getting the following error, please suggest why?
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: oauth/signpost/OAuthProvider
at com.google.code.linkedinapi.client.oauth.LinkedInOAuthServiceFactory.createLinkedInOAuthService(LinkedInOAuthServiceFactory.java:69)
at com.google.code.linkedinapi.client.oauth.LinkedInOAuthServiceFactory.createLinkedInOAuthService(LinkedInOAuthServiceFactory.java:57)
at com.google.code.linkedinapi.client.impl.BaseLinkedInApiClient.callApiMethod(BaseLinkedInApiClient.java:3751)
at com.google.code.linkedinapi.client.impl.BaseLinkedInApiClient.callApiMethod(BaseLinkedInApiClient.java:3725)
at com.google.code.linkedinapi.client.impl.BaseLinkedInApiClient.getProfileById(BaseLinkedInApiClient.java:1044)
at com.msceia.form.Test.main(Test.java:22)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: oauth.signpost.OAuthProvider
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:423)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:308)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:356)
ganesh says:

March 4, 2016 at 10:50 AM

how to get the company detail the user is admin
Divyesh Kanzariya says:

September 6, 2017 at 12:00 PM

linkedin-j is now almost dead this project is last update is 7 year ago but still working some basic functionality.