I'm building an app that allows users to sign up with facebook login. Facebook login gives us an expiring access token.
So far I've thought through having the phone app collect the facebook access token itself and it should POST it to the api. The api can search to see if it's seen this token before and if it hasn't the api should generate a new user account.
However the facebook docs mention that this token expires. If a user's token expires and they provide a new token to my api, the api will generate a new account for the existing user. How should I solve this?
Use the access token to access https://graph.facebook.com/me?fields=id, which will give you the user's unique ID for your application. Use that as the primary key.
You can try this out with the graph explorer tool https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/
You'll get a response like
{
"id": "10123455041265200"
}
Docs https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/user/
Related
I am using Facebook as advertising platform to promote my application on Apple and Google stores. I would like to make windows service which will download daily report(s) about advertising status of my marketing campaign running one Facebook, preferably using 60 day token, or some permanent solution so that token is retrieved when required. I think that i understand everything to do this except how to generate access token to use it with Facebook Graph API. Which token for which Facebook account do I need and how to obtain it?
You'll need a Facebook app and to grant that app the ads_read permission in order to retrieve reports about your advertising efforts via the API (source).
You'll want a long-lived token so that you don't have to re-authenticate very often. The access token documentation details the steps to exchange a short-lived token for a long-lived one.
You may also want to consider managing the app, ad account, and access tokens (via a business system user) with the FB Business Manager.
Create a facebook app.
Go to the Graph API Explorer in Facebook's Tools & Support section.
Pick your app from the drop down.
Hit Get Token > Get User Access Token.
In Select Permissions choose required permissions or select them from extended permissions.
Use the user access token that will be presented to you in the access token form input field.
there is a problem with my access token. I have made my own application, and I took the permission from the facebook user, who is me. And also I have given the same permissions to the facebook graph api. However when I can easily get the results using FQL with graph api access token, but I cannot get the result with my own application access token. What is the problem with my access token.
It is not user access token. Maybe this can be problem however also graph api is not also user access token.
Per the error message you need to use a user access token retrieved via the Authentication flow - you cannot use an app access token for this.
You mentioned in the comments you're successfully using an access token from the Graph API Explorer tool - this is also a user access token which the tool retrieves using the client-side oauth flow. This is not the same as using an app access token for your own app.
I'm doing an IOS app with facebook SSO. Upon user granted facebook permission to the app, the app will receive an access token. The app will then make an API call to the backend with ONLY the access token.
So is the backend possible to retrieve basic user information with ONLY access token while the user's facebook id is unknown?
Looking forward to an answer. thank u=)
Yes, once you have a user access token /me can be used as a placeholder for the current user's user ID
so /me/friends returns the access token user's friends, etc
It's a bug that has been recorded and fixed by Facebook. Update your base_facebook.php to versions 3.2.2.
You can track the bug here: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/238039849657148
I have a Facebook app and I can retrieve the App Token by calling
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id=YOUR_APP_ID
&client_secret=YOUR_APP_SECRET
&grant_type=client_credentials
as specified on the Authenticating as an App page. I see this app token is also available in the Access Token Tool page along with a User Token for the app. I need the User Token in order to do a /USER_ID/accounts on users that have already approved my app with the manage_pages permissions.
Basically I wish to post to a users Facebook page when they submit an article to my app. Some users are in locations where Facebook is blocked, thus I can't use the regular Javascript SDK.
Edit 1: I understand the concept of user access tokens and retrieving them via the SDK with the OAuth redirect. My question is in regards to the User Token for an app as seen in the Access Token Tool page, not a user access token (which requires client access to Facebook)
In order to get a user token without using the javascript SDK, you need to authenticate the user using the OAuth dialog redirect. Essentially, you prompt the user to fetch a code from Facebook that you can exchange for an access token. At this point you should store the access token and re-use it for all requests that require authentication. Keep in mind though that you will need to detect when the token is expired or invalidated, and if so you will need to re-issue the authentication redirect & token exchange process.
I wonder is it possible to access user's wall info without passing his/her access token?
for example, I will just pass my app secret token and app id. and FB user already allows to access his/her info from my app. Facebook does the checking and matching of my app and my app's user by just using my app secret token and app id.
Because I found some topics similar to that.
http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?pid=9172
When I check Rest FB doc,it says like that.
http://restfb.com/javadoc/index.html
public DefaultFacebookClient()
Creates a Facebook Graph API client with no access token.
Without an access token, you can view and search public graph data but can't do much else.
I doubt that it will work or not without access token.
can everyone share me ideas or any possible similar approaches ?
Thanks.
You will need to ask the users to authorize your app for offline access. You will be able to access the user's wall even if the user is offline, but you still need the access token. It is part of Facebook's security measures.
There are two types of access tokens:
Session based: expires in a short term, are used when the user will be logged to FB every time you need to perform an operation.
Offline access: do not expire and allow the app to perform operations for the user in any moment. This requires the offline_access permission when the app is authorized.
Check here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ for the oauth mechanism and here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions/ for the permissions list.
The REST API is deprecated and it is strongly suggested that you don't use it anymore. Furthermore, from this October you will be allowed to use only the Oauth2 authentication (see When is Facebook turning off their session based auth?)
Without token you can only access public information.
Public data
From RestFB homepage :
// It's also possible to create a client that can only access
// publicly-visible data - no access token required.
FacebookClient publicOnlyFacebookClient = new DefaultFacebookClient();
If the user does not protect his posts, then you can access everything without token. But most of user do protect their data and then you need a valid user access token to read the data.
Private data
When you say "FB user already allows to access his/her info from my app" it means that the user has clicked on "Allow app" in the web browser and at that moment here Facebook will give you a token. You can after use that token with RestFB :
FacebookClient facebookClient = new DefaultFacebookClient(USER_ACCESS_TOKEN);
User user = facebookClient.fetchObject("me", User.class);
out.println("User name: " + user.getName());
By default, the token will expire a few hours later. If you ask for the offline_access permission, the token will be valid for ever (as long as the user does not remove the permission for your app in his settings). You should store that token in your database to be able to use it when you need.
Get the user token
You cannot get the user token with RestFB. On the RestFB homepage, you can read :
Non-goals: [...] Providing a mechanism for obtaining session keys or OAuth access tokens
Because you need a browser to do so : the user has to authenticate and authorize your app on Facebook website (the popup that shows).
What you can do is to have a PHP page on which your users have to go to authorize your app. You can read this stackoverflow answer that explains how to use the Facebook PHP SDK to do so.
Hope that helps !