Implementation HMAC-SHA1 in python

I am trying to use the OAuth of a website, which requires the signature method to be 'HMAC-SHA1' only.

I am wondering how to implement this in Python?

Pseudocodish:

def sign_request():
    from hashlib import sha1
    import hmac

    # key = b"CONSUMER_SECRET&" #If you dont have a token yet
    key = b"CONSUMER_SECRET&TOKEN_SECRET" 


    # The Base String as specified here: 
    raw = b"BASE_STRING" # as specified by OAuth
       
    hashed = hmac.new(key, raw, sha1)
    
    # The signature
    return hashed.digest().encode("base64").rstrip('\n')

Signature errors usually reside in the base-string, make sure you understand this (as stated by the OAuth1.0 spec here: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-hammer-oauth-10#section-3.4.1).

The following inputs are used to generate the Signature Base String:

1. HTTP Method (for example GET)

2. Path (for example http://photos.example.net/photos)

3. Parameters, alphabetically, such as (line breaks for readability):

    file=vacation.jpg
    &oauth_consumer_key=dpf43f3p2l4k3l03
    &oauth_nonce=kllo9940pd9333jh
    &oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1
    &oauth_timestamp=1191242096
    &oauth_token=nnch734d00sl2jdk
    &oauth_version=1.0
    &size=original
   

Concatenate and URL encode each part and it ends up as:

GET&http%3A%2F%2Fphotos.example.net%2Fphotos&file%3Dvacation.jpg%26 oauth_consumer_key%3Ddpf43f3p2l4k3l03%26oauth_nonce%3Dkllo9940pd9333jh%26 oauth_signature_method%3DHMAC-SHA1%26oauth_timestamp%3D1191242096%26 oauth_token%3Dnnch734d00sl2jdk%26oauth_version%3D1.0%26size%3Doriginal

For the love of God, if you do ANYTHING with oauth, use the requests library for Python! I tried to implement HMAC-SHA1 using the hmac library in Python and it's a lot of headaches, trying to create the correct oauth base string and such. Just use requests and it's as simple as:

>>> import requests
>>> from requests_oauthlib import OAuth1

>>> url = 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/account/verify_credentials.json'
>>> auth = OAuth1('YOUR_APP_KEY', 'YOUR_APP_SECRET', 'USER_OAUTH_TOKEN', 'USER_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET')

>>> requests.get(url, auth=auth)

Requests Authentication

[Requests Oauth Library] 2

You can try following method.

def _hmac_sha1(input_str):
        raw = input_str.encode("utf-8")
        key = 'your_key'.encode('utf-8')
        hashed = hmac.new(key, raw, hashlib.sha1)
        return base64.encodebytes(hashed.digest()).decode('utf-8')

It's already there Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication

Finally here's an actually working solution (tested with Python 3) utilizing oauthlib.

I use the first OAuth step given as an example in the official RTF 1:

Client Identifier: dpf43f3p2l4k3l03
Client Shared-Secret: kd94hf93k423kf44

POST /initiate HTTP/1.1
Host: photos.example.net
Authorization: OAuth realm="Photos",
    oauth_consumer_key="dpf43f3p2l4k3l03",
    oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1",
    oauth_timestamp="137131200",
    oauth_nonce="wIjqoS",
    oauth_callback="http%3A%2F%2Fprinter.example.com%2Fready",
    oauth_signature="74KNZJeDHnMBp0EMJ9ZHt%2FXKycU%3D"

The value for oauth_signature is what we would like to calculate.

The following defines what we want to sign:

# There is no query string present.
# In case of http://example.org/api?a=1&b=2 - the value
# would be "a=1&b=2".
uri_query=""

# The oauthlib function 'collect_parameters' automatically
# ignores irrelevant header items like 'Content-Type' or
# 'oauth_signature' in the 'Authorization' section.
headers={
    "Authorization": (
        'OAuth realm="Photos", '
        'oauth_nonce="wIjqoS", '
        'oauth_timestamp="137131200", '
        'oauth_consumer_key="dpf43f3p2l4k3l03", '
        'oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1", '
        'oauth_callback="http://printer.example.com/ready"'
    )
}

# There's no POST data here - in case it was: x=1 and y=2,
# then the value would be '[("x","1"),("y","2")]'.
data=[]

# This is the above specified client secret which we need
# for calculating the signature.
client_secret="kd94hf93k423kf44"

And here we go:

import oauthlib.oauth1.rfc5849.signature as oauth

params = oauth.collect_parameters(
    uri_query="",
    body=data, 
    headers=headers,
    exclude_oauth_signature=True, 
    with_realm=False
)

norm_params = oauth.normalize_parameters(params)

base_string = oauth.construct_base_string(
    "POST", 
    "https://photos.example.net/initiate", 
    norm_params
)

sig = oauth.sign_hmac_sha1(
    base_string, 
    client_secret, 
    '' # resource_owner_secret - not used
)

---

from urllib.parse import quote_plus

print(sig)
# 74KNZJeDHnMBp0EMJ9ZHt/XKycU=

print(quote_plus(sig))
# 74KNZJeDHnMBp0EMJ9ZHt%2FXKycU%3D

There are multiple python libraries available at the oauth website, but if you're just interested in a specific implementation you could have a look at one of them.

In Python 3.7 there is an optimized way to do this. HMAC(key, msg, digest).digest() uses an optimized C or inline implementation, which is faster for messages that fit into memory.

> Return digest of msg for given secret key and digest. The function is > equivalent to HMAC(key, msg, digest).digest(), but uses an optimized C > or inline implementation, which is faster for messages that fit into > memory. The parameters key, msg, and digest have the same meaning as > in new(). > > CPython implementation detail, the optimized C implementation is only > used when digest is a string and name of a digest algorithm, which is > supported by OpenSSL.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/hmac.html#hmac.digest

In Python 3.7 there is an optimized way to do this. HMAC(key, msg, digest).digest() uses an optimized C or inline implementation, which is faster for messages that fit into memory.