Noob Questions - Using Patreon API with Desktop App

Friendly Help
1

Hi developers! I don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to coding with APIs so I’d like to ask for some help with the Patreon API and some advice for how I can achieve what I am trying to do.

I am writing a Java Swing application for a “Supporter Hub” for creators that will integrate with popular donation services like Patreon to bring a user’s supporter data to one place. The idea is that the user of the app can sign in to their Patreon account in my application. From there, the app will connect to Patreon and fetch a list of the user’s patrons and some basic info about them like pledge amount, date pledged, tiers, etc.

The only connection to Patreon would be the original authentication and then GET requests to fetch the patron info. There will be no sending new to Patreon at all.

So that said, here are my questions:

  1. Is this possible? The API reference seems to imply that the API can only be used to get your own patrons. I want to get the patrons of any user who is using the app.

  2. How does the http request work with desktop apps? Would the user press the app’s button to connect and then be redirected to Patreon to log in? Could I handle everything within the app?

  3. For the registering the client with Patreon, what do I put in the redirect URI field? As a desktop app, I don’t know what kind of redirect I would have.

Thank you for any response! I am new to this and I appreciate your taking the time to help me out :slight_smile:

2

For getting another creator’s patrons, you may need to get the creator token for that creator, and therefore have an app properly created for that patron.

You should be able to access a given singular user’s own memberships via their authorization though. But this would not give info about their patrons.

3

Thanks for the reply! Is there no way for the user to allow the app to get their own campaign info? I imagine this would be an important ability for anyone creating a patreon tool for other people. The API reference seemed to hint that it would be possible with the campaign scope in V2.