Usage for LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. It’s a great place to share your content and to connect with other professionals. Agoras makes use of the official LinkedIn API client to publish content on your behalf. Currently, Agoras supports the following actions: authorize, publish a post, like a post, share a post, delete a post, post the last URL from an RSS feed, post a random URL from an RSS feed and schedule a post (using a Google spreadsheet).

Required Credentials

Before using Agoras with LinkedIn, you’ll need to manually extract the following credentials from your LinkedIn App in the LinkedIn Developer Portal. These credentials are required for OAuth 2.0 authentication.

  • Client ID (LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID): Your LinkedIn App’s client identifier for OAuth authentication

  • Client Secret (LINKEDIN_CLIENT_SECRET): Your LinkedIn App’s client secret for OAuth authentication

  • Object ID (LINKEDIN_OBJECT_ID): The LinkedIn user or organization ID you want to post as

See LinkedIn credentials for detailed instructions on how to create a LinkedIn App and obtain these credentials.

Available Actions

  • authorize - Set up OAuth 2.0 authentication (required first step)

  • post - Create text and image posts (up to 4 images)

  • like - Like posts

  • share - Share posts

  • delete - Delete your own posts

Authorization

Added in version 2.0: OAuth 2.0 “authorize first” workflow

Before performing any actions, you must authorize Agoras to access your LinkedIn account:

agoras linkedin authorize \
  --client-id "${LINKEDIN_CLIENT_ID}" \
  --client-secret "${LINKEDIN_CLIENT_SECRET}" \
  --object-id "${LINKEDIN_OBJECT_ID}"

This will:

  1. Open your browser to LinkedIn’s OAuth authorization page

  2. Prompt you to grant permissions to Agoras

  3. Automatically capture the authorization code

  4. Store encrypted credentials in ~/.agoras/tokens/

After authorization, you can perform actions without providing tokens. Credentials are automatically refreshed when needed.

For CI/CD environments, see LinkedIn credentials for unattended execution setup.

Publish a LinkedIn post

This command will publish a post on your LinkedIn account. --text is the text of your post and can contain URLs that are going to be formatted into clickable links. A LinkedIn post can have a maximum of 3000 characters, so be careful not to exceed it. You can also add up to 4 images in your post using --image-1, --image-2, --image-3 and --image-4, which must be URLs that point to downloadable images.

Changed in version 1.1.1: Added support for --link parameter. If you want to add a link to your post, you can use this parameter. A preview of the link will be embedded in the post. If you want to add a link without a preview, you can add it to the --text parameter. Warning: if you add a link using --link and also add images using any of the --image-X parameters, the images will be ignored.

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

New format:

agoras linkedin post \
  --text "${STATUS_TEXT}" \
  --link "${STATUS_LINK}" \
  --image-1 "${IMAGE_URL_1}" \
  --image-2 "${IMAGE_URL_2}" \
  --image-3 "${IMAGE_URL_3}" \
  --image-4 "${IMAGE_URL_4}"

Like a LinkedIn post

This command will “like” a post identified by --post-id (read about how to get the id of a post here).

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

New format:

agoras linkedin like \
  --post-id "${LINKEDIN_POST_ID}"

Share a LinkedIn post

This command will grab a post identified by --post-id (read about how to get the id of a post here) and share it with your account.

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

New format:

agoras linkedin share \
  --post-id "${LINKEDIN_POST_ID}"

Delete a LinkedIn post

This command will delete a post identified by --post-id (read about how to get the id of a post here). Please note that you can only delete posts that you published.

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

New format:

agoras linkedin delete \
  --post-id "${LINKEDIN_POST_ID}"

Post the last URL from an RSS feed into LinkedIn

This command will parse an RSS feed located at --feed-url, and publish the last --max-count number of entries published in the last --post-lookback number of seconds. The post content will consist of the title and the link of the feed entry.

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

Please read about how the RSS feed should be structured in the RSS feed section. This ensures that the feed is correctly parsed and that the post content is properly formatted.

agoras utils feed-publish \
      --network "linkedin" \
      --mode "last" \
      --feed-url "${FEED_URL}" \
      --max-count "${MAX_COUNT}" \
      --post-lookback "${POST_LOOKBACK}"

Post a random URL from an RSS feed into LinkedIn

This command will parse an RSS feed at --feed-url and publish one random entry that’s not older than --max-post-age. The post content will consist of the title and the link of the feed entry.

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

Please read about how the RSS feed should be structured in the RSS feed section. This ensures that the feed is correctly parsed and that the post content is properly formatted.

agoras utils feed-publish \
      --network "linkedin" \
      --mode "random" \
      --feed-url "${FEED_URL}" \
      --max-post-age "${MAX_POST_AGE}"

Google Sheets Scheduling

Agoras can schedule LinkedIn posts using Google Sheets. This allows you to plan and automate post publishing.

Run Scheduled Messages

Process scheduled messages from a Google Sheet:

agoras utils schedule-run \
  --network linkedin \
  --sheets-id "${GOOGLE_SHEETS_ID}" \
  --sheets-name "LinkedIn" \
  --sheets-client-email "${GOOGLE_SHEETS_CLIENT_EMAIL}" \
  --sheets-private-key "${GOOGLE_SHEETS_PRIVATE_KEY}"

Note

You must run agoras linkedin authorize first before using this command.

Sheet Format

Your Google Sheet should have the following columns:

  • status_text: Post text content

  • status_link: URL to include in post

  • status_image_url_1 through status_image_url_4: Image URLs (optional)

  • date: Scheduled date (format: DD-MM-YYYY)

  • hour: Scheduled hour (format: HH, 24-hour format)

  • state: Post state (pending, published, error)

Example sheet row:

status_text,status_link,status_image_url_1,status_image_url_2,status_image_url_3,status_image_url_4,date,hour,state
"This is a test linkedin post","https://agoras.luisalejandro.org/en/latest/","https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ej3d42zXsAEfDCr?format=jpg","https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ej3d42zXsAEfDCr?format=jpg","","","21-11-2022","17","pending"

Scheduling Logic

  • Posts with state="pending" and scheduled time in the past are processed

  • Posts are created at the scheduled date and hour

  • Sheet state is updated to published after successful posting

  • If posting fails, state is updated to error

  • Use --network linkedin to process only LinkedIn posts, or omit to process all networks

How to get --linkedin-post-id parameter

The LinkedIn post ID parameter is necessary to like, share and delete posts. There are two ways to get it, one going directly to the LinkedIn website and the other using agoras. Notice that there are two forms of post IDs, one has the form urn:li:activity:NNNNNNNNNNN and the other has the form urn:li:share:NNNNNNNNNNN. Both are valid and can be used in agoras.

Extracting from LinkedIn website

You can extract it from the post URL:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:NNNNNNNNNNN

urn:li:activity:NNNNNNNNNNN is the post ID.

Using Agoras

When you create a LinkedIn post with Agoras, it will print the post ID (in json format) in the console. You can copy it from there and use it in other commands. For example:

$ agoras linkedin post \
      --text "This is a test post"
$ {"id":"urn:li:share:NNNNNNNNNNN"}

urn:li:share:NNNNNNNNNNN is the post ID.