Quickstart

First and foremost, versions 0.7.0.1 and up only supports OAuth2-based authentication. To get yourself setup with an OAuth2 app, see here.

###Choosing a User-Agent The first step in using the Reddit API effectively is making sure you're sending a descriptive User-Agent header. This allows Reddit to block buggy versions of your app while not affecting others. An effective User-Agent consists of four parts: The target platform, a unique ID (usually your package), a version, and your Reddit username. Let's say I was creating a script to run on a desktop. My platform would be desktop, my unique ID (package) would be net.dean.awesomebot, my version would be 0.1, and my reddit username would be thatJavaNerd.

UserAgent myUserAgent = UserAgent.of("desktop", "net.dean.awesomebot", "0.1", "thatJavaNerd");

###Authentication

Now we have the minimum amount of data required to create a RedditClient, the most significant class in the library.

RedditClient redditClient = new RedditClient(myUserAgent);

Since JRAW works only when using OAuth2, we have to authenticate the RedditClient, lest it be rendered useless. Fortunately, RedditClient comes with a helper class: OAuthHelper. This guide will assume you picked a script app, since those are the easiest to authenticate. If you need to use a web or installed app, see the OAuth2 page.

The first thing we need to do is get our credentials in order. JRAW comes with a Credentials class to help us organize everything.

Credentials credentials = Credentials.script("<username>", "<password>", "<clientId>", "<clientSecret>");

To use this data, we need to use the RedditClient's OAuthHelper. Since the Credentials we created was for a script, we can make use of OAuthHelper's easyAuth(Credentials) method.

OAuthData authData = redditClient.getOAuthHelper().easyAuth(credentials));

Finally, we can notify the RedditClient that we have been authorized.

redditClient.authenticate(authData);

Now we are fully authorized and are able to make requests to the API successfully! To test it out, try redditClient.me().

Note that you will need to renew your access token after one hour. To do this, see the OAuth2 page.