I have a livestreaming (consumer) app with an associated Facebook page, and my goal is to broadcast streams from my app onto my Facebook page (live).
I have understood that part of the process to do this is getting a page access token from an admin of the page (like myself), who has granted my app the pages_read_engagement and pages_manage_posts permissions (which I have not done). However, in order to request those permissions, it seems like I would have to change the status of my app in Facebook (from being a consumer app), add those permissions, and undergo app review, even though I only want to request those permissions from a specific user. (This particular method is also not possible, since I already have 200,000+ users actively using my app.)
So my question is, how can I get a Facebook page access token for only a specific user of a specific page?
Related
I've managed to get a Access Token that doesn't expire, however I've noticed that Data Expiry does have about a 3-month expiry lifespan on it.
From reading Facebook's own documentation, it appears that the access is based on when the user is last active.
Facebook Login also enables you to ask for permissions when people log in to your app. These permissions, if granted by the user, give your app access to items of user data. For example, your app can access a user's name and profile photo.
If an app asks for permissions, it is often necessary to put the app through app review so that Facebook can make sure that data is not misused. Your app can ask for people's name and photo (the default profile fields) and for email without going through app review, but all other permissions require review. For lists of permissions and which ones require app review, see Permissions Reference.
Does this mean that as long as I log into my Facebook profile that's linked - my Data Access will be extended? `
It's not related to logging in to your FB profile, but logging in to your app.
It looks like the token gets extended if it's being consistently used.
I have an app, and I can write to user's walls with it, having requested the publish_stream permission when they sign in.
I've also created a page and a group, and would like my app to be able to write to those. (Specifically, I want my back-end server to post some updates to those periodically, without a user being involved.) The ability to do this seems to be implied by the descriptions of the /feed parts of those here https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/page/ and here https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/group/ . However, I can't seem to find a way to authorize the app to write to these pages. Those docs say it can be done if you have publish_streams and manage_pages. OK, but how do I grant those to my app?
In the user case, you request those permissions when the user signs in via the OAuth flow. However, the page and the group never sign-in, so there's no way for them to grant the app permission. I looked around the settings pages for the group and the page, and couldn't find anything that will let me add the app. So how do I give the app the required permissions to post to the group and the page?
Found it!
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/application/
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/howtos/login/login-as-page/
"Application Page Access Tokens
To perform the following operations as an Application Page, and not the current user, you must use the Application's Page access token, not the user access token commonly used for modifying Graph API objects nor the Application access token. This access token can be retrieved by issuing an HTTP GET to /USER_ID/accounts with the manage_pages permission. This will return a list of Pages (including Application profile pages) to which the user has administrative access, along with an access_token for each Page.
Note: Applications that are configured as Native/Desktop apps will not be able to make API calls that require an application access_token."
So:
I went to http://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/ and, as me, created an access token with "manage_pages" permission.
I then went to https://graph.facebook.com/$myname/accounts?access_token=$accesstoken
and it gave me a list pages and apps that I had given permission to. I copied the access_token from the relevant page, and pasted that into my code, so that the server-side create event code always used that access token.
And it worked!
So there's an app, let's say it's an app that is capable of delivering relevant news based on the user's choice done the first time he runs the app. Is there a way to post the news to the user's wall without having the user to be online and ideally as the app?
So on his/hers timeline it would look like this (edited image, not a real post from some app, it's just so you get what I mean):
When I use $facebook->api('/me', 'post'), it just creates a post as the user, which is not what I want and does not allow me to post when the user is not logged in.
You can use the server side authentication to get a long lived access token (60 days) which you can then use until the token times out. Then you'll need to have the user reengage with your app to get a new token.
You can get the same thing by using the client side authentication and then extending the token on the server side.
Another options which should work for you is to get an app access token (which does not expire) and ask the user for the publish_stream permission, then:
App access tokens can also be used to publish content to Facebook on
behalf of a user who has granted a publishing permission to your
application.
I need to implement a system to retrieve information from a user of facebook independently of the user being logged into facebook.
I have user access token in my database but every time the user needs to login on facebook.
My question is how the authentication of Hootsuite (hootsuite.com) works because there it is not necessary.Just logging in the Hootsuite is possible to recover all data from facebook.
What you are talking about (If I understand you correctly) is a breech of privacy in the eyes of Facebook. A user has to be interacting with an application in order for it to retrieve information about the user.
Facebook's API access works by means of an access_token that is specific to the user and the application that requested it. access_token's have a limited time frame that they are valid, after that the application would have to request a new one or request an extension on that token. In either case, the user would have to be interacting with the application, and therefore logged into Facebook, when such a request is made.
I'm unfamiliar with the website you referred to but it is not in the scope of this site to reverse engineer some one else's application.
The instructions on using Single Sign-On (SSO) with the Facebook IOS SDK are to save the access token and expiration date in fbDidLogin and use them on subsequent calls to avoid unnecessary logins.
But what if the user logs out of Facebook outside the app (e.g. in the Facebook app or in Safari)? The app doesn't know about this, so it tries to use the saved token and expiration date, and to my surprise - they are still valid and the app can access the user's data even though the user has logged out.
Any way around this?
no, there is no way to do this. each FB login a user makes is specific to the client they logged in with. A FB login is not universal across all clients. The FB token you get from the SDK is a token for that user with your app. So if a user logs out of FB in their browser or another app, they have not logged of FB from your app so the token will remain valid until it expires or the app or user explicitly logs out from the context of your app.
Not sure why you are concerned about this. Generally you would want your users to remain logged in. If you have a reason you don't want this don't request "offline_access" permission when you authorize a FB user and you can also logout and de-authorize the user via the FB API based on whatever criteria you deem appropriate.