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I'm using R to connect with the LinkedIn API. I'd like to pass it the email of a user and retrieve that user's public profile. I've gone through the documentation here, but have found nothing useful on the subject.

I'm sure that this is somehow possible because Rapportive has been doing it for a long time. Any help would be appreciated!

Sekoul
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  • The `httr` package has a [full example](https://github.com/hadley/httr/blob/master/demo/oauth2-linkedin.r) on using the LinkedIn API. – hrbrmstr Jan 17 '15 at 17:02
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    Thanks for the response - I actually used that exact script to connect. I'm just not sure how to 'GET' a public profile from an associated email. Any clue? – Sekoul Jan 17 '15 at 20:34
  • So it's rather a linkedin question than a R question, isn't it? Afaik, it's not possible to get profile info by email addresses via the linkedin api, see. e.g. https://developer.linkedin.com/forum/closed-find-user-profile-based-their-email-address-not-possible. – lukeA Jan 17 '15 at 20:51
  • It seems like you're right - thank you! I was hoping that there is a workaround since apps like Vibe, 360Social and FullContact are able to pull social profiles from email input... But maybe they have a special partnership with LinkedIn and others. – Sekoul Jan 18 '15 at 01:17

1 Answers1

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There are three ways to match a user's email address with a LinkedIn profile.

  1. Have a special partnership with LinkedIn which allows you access to non-public API functions. This is very hard, and per my understanding, they only consider big guys (Startups with serious funding, established companies...)

  2. Retrieve the user's details from another social network via email (Facebook used to allow that, not sure these days), and then perform a faceted search in LinkedIn's API using details other than the email (name, job title, location...) . You will get accurate results lots of times.

  3. Use a 3rd party service such as fullcontact.com in order to get you those results.

I'm not sure if you'll be breaking any LinkedIn TOS, it all depends on what you're trying to achieve. So make sure you thoroughly read their TOS.

Samer Bechara
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