Hootsuite Common Errors

Error Reference

401 Unauthorized

Cause: Access token expired (tokens last ~1 hour). Fix: Refresh token via OAuth:

curl -X POST https://platform.hootsuite.com/oauth2/token \
  -u "$HOOTSUITE_CLIENT_ID:$HOOTSUITE_CLIENT_SECRET" \
  -d "grant_type=refresh_token&refresh_token=$HOOTSUITE_REFRESH_TOKEN"

403 Forbidden

Cause: App lacks required permissions or user doesn't own the resource. Fix: Check app scopes in developer portal. Ensure user has access to the social profile.

422 Unprocessable Entity — scheduledSendTime

Cause: Scheduled time is in the past or invalid ISO 8601 format. Fix: Always use future dates in ISO 8601: new Date(Date.now() + 3600000).toISOString()

422 — socialProfileIds

Cause: Profile ID invalid or disconnected. Fix: List profiles first: GET /v1/socialProfiles and verify IDs.

429 Too Many Requests

Cause: Rate limit exceeded. Fix: Implement exponential backoff. See hootsuite-rate-limits.

Media Upload — State REJECTED

Cause: File too large, wrong format, or exceeds platform limits. Fix: Check per-platform limits: Twitter images 5MB, Facebook 10MB, video varies.

invalid_grant — Token Exchange

Cause: Authorization code expired (30 second lifetime) or already used. Fix: Re-initiate OAuth flow — codes are single-use and expire in 30s.

redirect_uri_mismatch

Cause: Redirect URI doesn't exactly match app registration. Fix: Must match character-for-character, including trailing slash.

Quick Diagnostics

# Test token validity
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $HOOTSUITE_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  https://platform.hootsuite.com/v1/me

# List profiles (verifies full API access)
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $HOOTSUITE_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  https://platform.hootsuite.com/v1/socialProfiles | python3 -m json.tool

Overview

This reference triages profile, schedule, approval, audience, and quota failures through redacted status and opaque IDs. It does not authorize copying post content, media, handles, or account metadata into a ticket.

Prerequisites

• A draft-only sandbox probe, redacted correlation ID, endpoint class, and HTTP or terminal schedule status.
• A scoped read-only diagnostic credential and named owner for account, audience, or approval changes.

Instructions

1. Classify authentication, authorization, profile lookup, approval, audience, validation, quota, and schedule errors before changes.
2. Reproduce once with the draft-only fixture, capturing only status, latency, quota, and opaque IDs.
3. Check scope, approval, audience, schedule state, and quota in that order.
4. Apply one reversible change at a time and escalate a redacted bundle when the failure persists.

Output

Return error class, correlation ID, profile scope, probe outcome, remediation attempted, and next owner. Do not include copy, media, handles, tokens, or identities.

Error Handling

Treat unknown profile/audience, missing approval, failed redaction, public-post path, or repeated non-idempotent schedule as a stop condition. Cancel/revert rather than retrying with broader scope.

Examples

status=429; profile=sandbox-brand; correlation=schedule-opaque-11; action=bounded-backoff; public_posts=0; safe_probe=recovered supports a safe handoff.

Resources

• Hootsuite API FAQ
• REST API Reference

Next Steps

For debugging tools, see hootsuite-debug-bundle.