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
- Classify authentication, authorization, profile lookup, approval, audience, validation, quota, and schedule errors before changes.
- Reproduce once with the draft-only fixture, capturing only status, latency, quota, and opaque IDs.
- Check scope, approval, audience, schedule state, and quota in that order.
- 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
Next Steps
For debugging tools, see hootsuite-debug-bundle.