BigCommerce API OAuth server to server script - php

Question

The latest specification for connecting to the BigCommerce API recommends using OAuth since the simple auth method will soon be deprecated.
I have been using the BigCommerce API within some PHP scripts that access the Store API for my store. These scripts do relatively simple things like update product names, update product prices, etc.
I'm confused as to how I transfer these scripts over to use the new OAuth system. Everything I am reading makes it seem like OAuth is based around developing an actual app that a user installs and authorizes to access their store. However, this is clearly not my use case, and has left me very confused.
A simple example would be a script to retrieve products from my store. I would simply run this code in a PHP file:
Bigcommerce::configure(array(
'store_url' => 'https://www.my-store.com',
'username' => 'my_username',
'api_key' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
));
Bigcommerce::setCipher('RC4-SHA');
Bigcommerce::verifyPeer(false);
Bigcommmerce::getProducts();
How can I achieve this same thing using OAuth? Is it even possible?

Answer 1

I would probably create a quick "app" to get a Client ID, Client Secret & Token. Then use those credentials for authentication externally. So you would install an "authentication app" but execute your code from outside of BC.
Note that this is not that different from how an installed app that is iframed in works.
PS, I have not actually tried this but in theory it should work.

Answer 2

I realize this may be a bit off-topic as I see you're using PHP and my experience has been with C# but thought I'd add my comments on the issue so maybe someone will benefit:
I've been working on this same type of oauth token issue and the docs haven't been much help, but once I got going I finally managed to get the app setup by creating my SSL callback page locally on my server. Once I specified that URL in the app settings I was all set. The caveat being I had to do perform the 'install' from the server itself since it wasn't a public URL while logged into BC as the store owner. I was then able to get the temporary token from the querystring and post back to https://login.bigcommerce.com/oauth2/token and obtain the permanent token from the response stream.
One thing their API rep did mention that may be of interest is that eventually you're going to need to refresh the 'permanent' token every 60-90 days or so once they get their end in order.

Answer 3

#developerscott is perfectly correct, but just to add on to your question on how to achieve the same thing as your code using oAuth with the BC PHP API SDK
Once you have an oAuth access token and the client_id of an app you created, you can use them to utilize oAuth in your PHP scripts. You just need to provide those credentials into the Bigcommerce::configure() method like so, instead of the username and api_key properties:
Bigcommerce::configure(array(
'store_hash' => 'abcdef',
'client_id' => '123xxxx321',
'auth_token' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
));
Bigcommerce::setCipher('RC4-SHA');
Bigcommerce::verifyPeer(false);
Bigcommmerce::getProducts();