- Refresh Token Spotify Api
- Invalid Token Python
- Spotify Invalid App Token Settings
- Spotify Invalid App Token Password
In this article, we’re sharing tips for connecting Spotify to your mobile iOS application. The guide is based on our web and mobile development experience and explores the stages of SDK connection: the process of login, token authentication, and the built-in Spotify player management.
In this week’s episode, I review the Spotify API – more specifically the OAuth capability. My goal: get an OAuth Access Token for my app, so I can call the API. To achieve this goal, I will go to the dev portal, learn about the API, use the API and write a node.js application. Follow along or just watch and learn (from my mistakes;-).
Spotify offers an application programming interface (API) and a software development kit (SDK).
An API is a collection of routines, data structures, and classes designed specifically to interact with a piece of software. An SDK comprises of the API and tools for its management.
When creating an application, it’s better to use an SDK (if there’s one available), as it simplifies the development. Although the Spotify iOS SDK is in beta (ver. beta-25), it’s stable enough to use. Note that using Spotify’s SDK for commercial projects requires their team’s official written approval.
With Spotify integrated with your app, its users can receive user data, play audio and share public data. The latter includes sharing different Spotify items (albums, artists and playlists), and managing collaborative playlists. However, the ability is limited to public items only.
Implementing the Spotify iOS SDK
For this article, we decided to show you the integration of Spotify’s iOS SDK with a mobile application for listening to music from several audio streaming services. Here, users can link to and undock their Spotify accounts, and log into several devices without re-connecting to the integrated services.
Keep in mind that although there is an official tutorial for implementing Spotify’s SDK, it can only introduce the basic functionality. The process of connecting the SDK to a real product is significantly different in terms of login logic and token management.
First things first, you need to create an XCode project, register a Spotify account and make it premium. It’s necessary for streaming. For those not sure it’s worth the purchase, there’s a free trial.
Registering your app in Spotify
Go to the Spotify’s Dashboard and log into your account. Find a Create an App button there. Enter your name and application description. Then examine the following fields:
Now find this button . Enter your name and app description. After this we are interested in the following fields:
Client ID - your app’s unique identifier, which is required for the SDK integration.
Client Secret - your app’s secret key, which is used on the server.
Redirect URL - a link returning to your application in case of login readdressing to the native app or Safari. Here, we used
projectname://spotify/callbackBundle ID - your app’s bundle ID.
Creating a SpotifyLoginController
We’re using a custom login, and not the one given in the tutorial because we need to receive a server authentication code.
First, let’s create a controller with UIWebView (go with the UIWebViewController if you wish; we prefer using UIViewController with an additional UIWebView; the delegate is self).
Then, we need to implement a basic Spotify initialization in viewDidLoad:
Here’s a closer look:
SPTAuthStreamingScope, SPTAuthPlaylistReadPrivateScope, SPTAuthPlaylistModifyPublicScope, and SPTAuthPlaylistModifyPrivateScope - are our app’s access rights
- SpotifyRedirectURI is the redirect URL we specified in the Spotify app settings
- SpotifyTokenSwapURL and SpotifyTokenRefreshURLb are something we’re going to discuss in a little while
When the controller appears in viewWillAppear, we need to initialize a login link:
Look at the following parameters:
- client_id - is our app’s client ID
- scope - is the access permission
- redirect_uri - is a redirect URL that lets us return to the app and spot the completion of login
- nosignup = true - disables automatic login
- show_dialog = true - is a required “Is it really you?” user confirmation
- response_type = code - is a type of returned value (you can get code or access token here - we’re interested in the former).
Here’s how the response is processed:
A successful login implementation results into a session, which is available through SPTAuth.defaultInstance().session. The peculiarity of Spotify’s sessions is the duration of their lifespan. At the time of writing, it’s 1 hour long. Once this period expires, you have to call the SPTAuth.defaultInstance().renewSession method.
Seemingly not an issue, you just have to add a SPTAuth.defaultInstance().session.isValid() method validation, but here’s a catch: all sessions are stored locally on devices.
Storing and updating tokens
If you want user to login to several devices without signing into their Spotify over and over again, you’re going to have to do the following:
- Remember we mentioned SpotifyTokenSwapURL and SpotifyTokenRefreshURL? Those are links to the server requests that implement Spotify token updates. When updating a session, you need to fix the renewSession method:
We highly recommend that you reassign swap and refresh links before making any session updates. Otherwise, you might accidentally call renewSession in places, where SPTAuth.defaultInstance() hasn’t been configured yet.
Implement swap and refresh methods on the server. Here’s an example of this process in Ruby.
Once it has been working for an hour or so, call the renewSession method from your SDK, which then queries your server, gets the necessary data, creates a session and stores it on the device (again, locally).
With the following methods, the newly created session can be transformed into a string and back:
A transformed session can be stored either locally or on a server, but you need to encrypt it first.
Songs stream
Spotify SDK allows your app’s users to listen to entire songs without being redirected to the Spotify application.
Audio streaming is done not through the usual AVPlayer, but through the SPTAudioStreamingController. For this example, we saved a Spotify player item as a singleton in the Utils class, which makes it accessible from anywhere:
When launching our app (or once we have a connected Spotify account), we can call the player initialization:
In this example, a Spotify Premium check block (the error code is 9, which means a standard account that doesn’t permit audio streaming) is commented due to request instability (which is plausible given that the SDK is in beta). Streaming is only available when there are no errors, regardless of their type.
The main methods of Spotify’s player
Track listing:
Play and Pause
Stop:
The current position:
The overall track duration:
Rewind:
This concludes our article on implementing Spotify’s iOS SDK for mobile application development. We hope you’ve found something worth learning.
Do your consider integrating Spotify with your mobile application? Contact our sales department today to start working on your project.
P.S. Do not forget to logout from Spotify
Refresh Token Spotify Api
Useful links
Spotify even though it’s a great music service, its apps don’t function properly always and sometimes causes problems. These errors are pretty annoying like sometimes Spotify won’t open at all. There are several other problems that users often face with Spotify like waiting to download or local files not showing. But as there are solutions for those problems there is also a solution to this Spotify problem also.
Update – 10/07/2020 – Turn off mobile data or turn on Airplane mode to enjoy the offline songs in your Spotify App.
Why won’t Spotify open on my computer?
There could many reasons as to why Spotify might not be opening or crashing while trying to open. Maybe your audio drivers are outdated, maybe you need to clear out your Spotify cache or maybe there was a problem while update Spotify and you need to update it properly again.
Or just maybe the Spotify crashed while you were trying to close and reinstalling the app and rebooting your computer might just solve the problem. Here are a few tricks you can try to make Spotify open again –
1. Uninstall & Delete Spotify Cache
Some users report that if you uninstall the mal-functioning Spotify app and then also clear its cache and then do a clean reinstall, while also in between giving your computer a restart, seems to solve the problem.
Here’s how you can do that –
- In order to simultaneously uninstall and clear cache of Spotify, download and install IOBit Uninstaller. This is a 3rd party software which works absolutely fine.
- After installing open up the app and under ‘All Programs’ look for the Spotify app. There will be a green dustbin icon beside the Spotify app name, click it.
- Then when a new sub-window appears, tick the option ‘Automatically remove residual files’ and click on the uninstall button. Spotify will be now successfully uninstalled and all its cache and data will be cleared.
- This should successfully uninstall Spotify and also clear out all its data and cache. Now give your computer a reboot and then reinstall the latest version of Spotify.
But what if you don’t want to install a third-party app on your system? Well, we have a manual solution for you then.
- Uninstall the Spotify app, the normal way from the control panel first. Then go to this location in your File explorer ‘C:UsersUsernameAppDataLocalSpotify‘ and delete the whole Spotify folder. Then give your computer a restart.
- Then install the latest version of Spotify and check if Spotify is opening.
- If you are having problems in deleting the cache folders yourself, why not try using trusted 3rd-party apps and let them do the job? You can use apps like Wise Care 365 and then just do a checkup of your computer inside the app and it will automatically find temporary files and unwanted data and delete those while clearing out tons of space for you.
2. Update Spotify
Sometimes bugs in the current version of Spotify app that you are using can also cause Spotify to not open, so it would be best to check for updates in Spotify and if there are any updates available, then update to the latest version of the app. You can learn to update Spotify in different devices to their latest versions from this link.
3. Update Windows
A lot of times some bugs in Windows updates cause problems in applications and this is a pretty common thing. But if you have windows restore enabled then you don’t need to worry, as you can just restore to the previous version and then try running Spotify again.
A corollary, older Windows versions might not work properly with new applications like Spotify which get frequently updated and they would need to be updated to the latest version that is available. First enable Windows restore and take a backup of your current system and then proceed onto update your Windows to the latest version that is available, note that no data will be deleted while updating so do not worry.
After updating try running Spotify and if it does not work and you face other problems, then you can always restore your system as you already have a backup.
4. Update Audio Drivers
Sometimes outdated audio drivers can cause problems with music apps and might often cause them to crash, as none of your sound-related devices would get recognised. Try using apps like Driver Booster to automatically update all your outdated device drivers automatically.
Just install Driver Booster, by following the on-screen instructions and then run it. It will then scan your computer for all connected devices and will match the installed drivers with their database and also look for missing drivers. It will then install all missing drivers and update all the outdated ones.
Then after installing and updating all the drivers, your device will restart, you can then try running Spotify. You just learned to fix the Spotify won’t open error now, are you facing the Spotify can’t play this right now error? Well, check that link out then.