Thank you very much for visiting this topic. Currently I'm working on a smaller application that can be installed on facebook pages (not accounts, but separately created pages, like company or fan pages on facebook). I managed to fire up the php SDK for it, even made successful user authentications and played around with access tokens (only user access tokens though).
However my problems arose when I've tried to determine if the current user is an administrator for that facebook page (where the application is installed).
I've done numerous google searches and research into this topic, but sadly I've realised that most tutorials, questions or related topics are all outdated, or they have obsolete solutions.
I kept running into the 'manage-pages' permission when people advised me to go for page access tokens. However in my opinion asking facebook to grant me manage-pages permission, then prompting users to allow me access to everything on their pages during authentication seems a bit far fetched.
I do not want to modify or read their page contents in any way. I simply want a mini admin page for the application that can be opened by only users that are admins of that certain page.
I've seen an edit url that can be added in the settings of the application. However I could not find out what it does, or how can I access it if I add an url there. The related documentation on facebook seems to be out of date.
I would be very grateful if someone can point me in the right direction with this. Basically I'm looking for a method, that does not require me to use the 'manage_pages' permission, but I can still check out if the current user viewing the installed application on the page is an admin or not. (I wonder if facebook supports an other method for this)
Thank you very much for any kind of tips or aid in this matter!
Facebook never gives of fan pages or other pages access.
You have to communicate with facebook page admin and its give a token.
Suppose if you have a permission than it generated token will be you use in your application
how do you do?
1 communicate with admin.
2 Admin generat token from https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer
3 go to tools and support than it generated token you use in your application.
Note: "Page of admin can it do to generate token"
I want to make an application that runs in the background on a server, and syncs ad information from Facebook to a database on my server periodically (say once per hour).
The application will have no user interaction at all, meaning there is no user to click "I'm okay with Facebook using my info" every time you need to authenticate.
I found this in their docs: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens#apptokens
The problem is, it doesn't seem to work. I can generate an access_token just fine. Example here:
$ curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=123456789012345&client_secret=s3cr3tt0k3n12a4zz1345a6fgx5aa3f6&grant_type=client_credentials'
access_token=123456789012345|SomeRandomLettersAndNumbers
However, when I go to use it I just get permission denied errors:
$ curl 'https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/me/adaccounts?access_token=123456789012345|SomeRandomLettersAndNumbers'
{"error":{"message":"An active access token must be used to query information about the current user.","type":"OAuthException","code":2500,"fbtrace_id":"DQ8ysX2mHCu"}}
Same thing happens when I make the request via their explorer tool found here: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/
Notes:
I have an app set up.
I am the admin.
I claimed the app on my business account.
I created one ad account.
It is not a Native / Desktop app.
Important one: I can get the info if I use a user token instead of an app token, but this requires me to be on a website, and click through a popup window, which obviously I can't do every hour for my server-side app.
I'm not sure if I have to set the permissions somewhere to allow me to use the access token, or maybe I need to set up a "platform" for my app (none of the available ones seem to fit).
UPDATE:
The answer to this question is to use a system user as documented here: https://developers.facebook.com/ads/blog/post/2016/04/05/system-user-rollout/
We have an app on facebook for login on our website. I'd like to retrieve open graph data (simple things such as likes, interests, etc) combine it with our own database, to run some analysis to gage customer behavior.
I'm running into some issues with the auth token and it seems like even though the user approved the app, you cannot retroactively pull the customer data. Is this correct, or am I missing something?
To fetch data that occurred in the past (e.g. using a script) then you'll need to make use of long term access tokens. Facebook's documentation gives a great overview on how these work, but in short:
Short term access tokens are usually perfect for actions the user takes while on your website/app.
Long term access tokens are great for providing access to the user's profile when they're not actively logged in to your website/app (the short term access token will have expired & changed)
If you save a permanent access token for the user, you'll be able to pull data for all users retroactively.
I'm trying to enable automated posting of links to news articles when they are published on an external site (which happens without any user input).
From what I've gathered, an app on Facebook can't manage a fan page directly - only through a manager of that page with the manage_pages permission. This means generating an access token for a manager first in order to obtain a page access code (with a maximum lifespan of 2 months).
It's really awkward to have to manually generate a new token (even if it just means logging in again) whenever the old one expires. Is there a better way of doing it?
I'm aware that there are many questions about Facebook access-tokens and the grief they cause, but despite much experimentation and reading many frustratingly vague blog articles (FB and otherwise), I'm still struggling to get a clear answer to my needs. Let me succinctly break down my process so far:
I am creating a site that, server-side, needs to pull the posts/statuses from a single Facebook Page
I am an admin of that Facebook Page
I have created a Facebook App
Using the Facebook Graph API Explorer, I've generated a short-lived key, connected to my app and my account, that grants permission to my account to view the access-tokens for my pages
I've converted my short-lived key to a long-lived key (60 days) ala scenario 4 from this
And here's where I am stuck. My 60 day key works fine for my server to pull the info needed from the page, but as far I can tell, there's no way to programmatically extend that 60 day key. I also do not know of a way to generate a new short-lived key without manually going to the Facebook Graph API Explorer and creating one.
Since it is my server making the requests to the Facebook API and not a user-based system (where I could easily request that a user authorize the Facebook app again), this creates a very clunky system. Since Facebook deprecated offline_access, is there really no permanent way to have my server pull info from my own page? Will I really have to create a new key by hand and manually update my server with it every 60 days?
Or is there something I'm missing?
Update:
The step-by-step guide that was previously found here has been migrated down into its own answer.
These are the steps that were previously in the question - they have been migrated to this answer.
Having found that it is possible to generate a Facebook Page Access Token that does not expire (with help from #Igy), here is a clear, step-by-step quide for all those looking to the same:
Make sure you are the admin of the FB page you wish to pull info from
Create a FB App (should be with the same user account that is the page admin)
Head over to the Facebook Graph API Explorer
On the top right, select the FB App you created from the "Application" drop down list
Click "Get Access Token"
Make sure you add the manage_pages permission
Convert this short-lived access token into a long-lived one by making this Graph API call:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=<your FB App ID >&client_secret=<your FB App secret>&grant_type=fb_exchange_token&fb_exchange_token=<your short-lived access token>
Grab the new long-lived access token returned back
Make a Graph API call to see your accounts using the new long-lived access token: https://graph.facebook.com/me/accounts?access_token=<your long-lived access token>
Grab the access_token for the page you'll be pulling info from
Lint the token to see that it is set to Expires: Never!
That should do it. You should now have a Facebook Page Access Token that doesn't expire, unless:
You change your Facebook account password
You lose admin access for the target page
You delete or de-authorize your Facebook App
Any of these will cause the access token to become invalid.
If you are getting (#100) Tried accessing nonexisting field (accounts) on node type (Page), go to the Access Token Debugger, copy the value of User ID, and use it to replace the "me" part of the URL in step 9.
This is covered in the Offline Access deprecation document
Use the 60-day token for the page admin to retrieve a Page Access Token (via /PAGE_ID?fields=access_token or /me/accounts) - the Page access token will not have an expiry time
An approach that works in 2019
I was recently trying to achieve something similar (to the use case described in this thread), but I wanted to make sure to respect Facebook's current policies, so I did a little research and here I'm sharing what I found.
My use case
So, as I said already, my use case is very similar to the one described here; that is:
I'm doing some work for a school district.
They are using a software tool to manage pretty much everything that relates to school transportation.
That tool allows them to send email notifications (to subscribers) when they publish bus delay alerts and school closure alerts.
A lot of people in the community follow the organization on their Facebook page, and that's the only place they look for those alerts.
So an employee of the organization has to manually publish each notification on the Facebook page (in addition to creating it in the transportation software). Moreover, those notifications eventually expire (or are simply deleted before they expire), so the employee has to go back later on to delete them manually as well.
It's a waist of time, so what we are trying to do here is to develop as simple system that periodically polls the software tool's database for new (and expired) notifications and update them (i.e. add and remove) on the Facebook page.
This is, in my view, a legitimate use case, but I wasn't sure how to implement it in a way that's in line with Facebook's policies.
The accepted answer
I followed the steps of the accepted answer and it worked, except that things appear to have changed: now, even though the generated page token does not expire, access to data does expire after around 60 days. You will see that as well if you follow the procedure and inspect the page token in the FB Token Debugger Tool.
Besides, the fact that the generated page tokens are tied to the user account is also unfortunate, because if the user updates his/her password, then the page token also gets invalidated.
How to do it in 2019
After several hours of research, I stumbled upon the following Facebook documentation article: Business Login for Direct Businesses.
It turns out that it is now possible, following the steps described in the above article, to generate a page token that is not associated to any particular Facebook user account and which will not expire (unless the FB App gets deleted or the underlying application token gets deleted, you know...)
So here are the steps and the most important parts:
You need a Business Manager account.
Verification will be required and a digital contract will have to be signed.
You need to add the target Facebook page to that account.
You need to create a Facebook App, and transfer that app to the same Business Manager account as well.
The app will have to go through Facebook's review process, because the following permissions will be needed: manage_pages and publish_pages.
Important note For the posts made using the generate page token to be visible to users other than the application administrators, that app will need to have been published and approved.
You may still experiment with the concept without submitting for review, but the posts won't be publicly visible.
In the Business Manager account (only after your app and page have been added to the account), you need to create what's called a System User, and give that user admin role (or permissions) to the target Facebook page.
A system user is owned by the Business Manager account, and isn't tied to a specific user. My current understanding is that one major use case for a system user is programmatic access to Facebook's Graph API (just what we need).
Then, for that system user, you need to generate a access token (which will be never-expiring). You will be prompted to select for which app. You will then select your target app.
You will then need to use the generated app token to generate a page token, which will also be never-expiring. The procedure is described in this article as:
GET /<PAGE_ID>?fields=access_token&access_token=<SYSTEM_USER_ACCESS_TOKEN>
That's it.
That token will never expire, and it won't be tied to a particular Facebook user, so it's exactly what we need!
The last part is to make sure that your Facebook app gets approved by Facebook. It's in fact the most important part, because the whole procedure is worthless if people don't see our posts.
I wanted to know for sure that I could rely on the above procedure to build something for my client without Facebook rejecting it in the end, so, beforehand (i.e. before starting to work on my client's project), I went through the whole process of creating a page, an app, a Business Manager account, etc. I verified my business. I submitted my app for review. In my request, I was very specific about my use case and emphasized that the app was for "self-use" (i.e. that the organization is developing an app for itself, not for other Facebook users). I got approved without less than 24 hours.
A few other notes about the app review process:
I had to select a platform for the app, so I selected website.
I had to indicate why the app needed the two permissions and how it was going to use them.
I had to indicate why the reviewer would not be able to sign into my app and try it (i.e. because the app will be used by a worker process).
For the mandatory screencasts, I simply presented manual operations in the terminal using the curl utility (to generate the page token and make posts to the Facebook page). I also showed how I was using Business Manager to link the system user to the page and generate a token, and so on.
Again, I was very specific about my use case, and I think that that helped.
I hope this information will be useful to people with similar use cases.
Many thanks to #redhotvengeance for step-by-step guide.
After some time, now there is clearly described in Facebook documentation:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/expiration-and-extension
Extending Page Access Tokens
Apps can retrieve a page access token from Page admin users when they
authenticate with the manage_pages permission. If the user access
token used to retrieve this page access token is short-lived, the page
access token will also be short-lived.
To get a longer-lived page access token, exchange the User access
token for a long-lived one, as above, and then request the Page access
token. The resulting page access token will not have any expiry time.
You can also copy and past from the app dashboard on facebook.
The steps:
Go to https://developers.facebook.com
Select your app in the top right corner of the page
(pic of what it looks like)
Click on Messenger from the options on the left (it will go to setting automatically) (pic of what it looks like)
Go to the "Token Generation" section in the page. Select what page you want to generate the token for. (pic of what that section looks like)
The copy and past your page token where ever you need it.
Keep in mind that while in theory your token won't expire, that it is directly tied to what ever facebook account your logged into. So say you change your password or you remove the permissions from between your account and your app then your token won't be valid any more.