Getting Public Facebook Posts with an App Token - facebook

I'm using the facebook graph api to access publicly posted information of an arbitrary user. I'm using my own profile for testing and have posted a single public post.
The endpoint that I'm using is:
https:graph.facebook.com/v2.4/{id}/feed
However, this endpoint returns an empty set of data:
{
"data": [
]
}
This occurs regardless of which type of access token I use. I've tried an app access token, a regular access token with no additional permissions, and a regular access token with 'user_posts' selected. I'm especially confused about receiving no data with the last access token as that should include all posts that I've made.
I'd much prefer to use an app access token if possible - it's much easier to get a new one than it is to prompt a user to allow access. What am I doing wrong here?

This can't be done for all users. Facebook requires a person to be logged in order to see public posts from certain users. App credentials won't work to see an arbitrary user's public posts.

Related

Facebook Graph App Access Token Limitations

I am trying to build a miner to pull some statistics from public Facebook pages using Graph. This is easy enough going through the developer documentation and generating a short-term user access token. With the short-term user access token I am able to pull everything that I need.
Easy Problem:
I would like to get a long-term access token for obvious reasons, and I was able to do this following several other answers through this site. So I created an app and used the app to create a 60 day user access token. This ended up being pretty straightforward.
Harder Problem:
With this long-term user access token I am not able to pull the same public information that I could pull with my basic user access token. For example, "category" is not available when pulling information about a public page. Also, I cannot see the number of likes for a given public post. I have a feeling that there is something with the App permissions but I'm not sure what I should do.
App Specifications/Information:
I added a logo, privacy policy and I have the basic permission set for e-mail, public_profile and user_friends. I have not added a platform or any additional permissions.
I would really appreciate it if someone could let me know how to either keep my user account logged in while I make the get requests or give my app user token the permissions to mine posts on public accounts.

Public Access Token for Facebook, Permissions

I'm new to the Facebook Graph API!
I want to display the 5 latest news feed items from my public Facebook page. I understand you can do that through https://graph.facebook.com/cocacola/feed/?limit=5, but it requires an access token, however, https://graph.facebook.com/cocacola doesn't.
When these access tokens are generated through Facebook's Graph API Explorer, what permissions are given for the token? Just the information already displayed in the above link?
So would it be safe to use the access token via cURL's PHP? I only need read access. Would it be insecure to display the access token in the source code? I'm confused as to why the latter link doesn't need an access token while the /feed/ does, even though it's a public facebook page.
when you use your app in a website there is a parameter that defines how much access you have from the user, u can set up params like, email, photo_stream, friend_stream, etc. when the user accepts the conditions, the generated AUTH TOKEN has permisions from that scope.

developers.facebook.com issued access token VS OAuth generated

Interesting problem I'm having right now.
Signing in an App gives a access token looking something like this:
AAACwFsGcSr4BAOGUTwfuZAWuUcwZC0rJ7noZCKMqhBI7ivDCsIGqduGIZCus5PRaS6KuREqxLmhfvZAZAkz5WCpFfANtUpYHgZD
This access token can't access users PUBLIC information, while one issued by Facebook on developers.facebook.com - CAN.
You can easily test this by logging to your facebook and going to this link: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/
You'll see that Facebook automatically generates access token on DEMO urls like this one:
https://graph.facebook.com/me/music
?access_token=2227470867|2.AQCvlA_ZaJ2MfRR0.3600.1318266000.0-100001572415177|2FeweU6ZvOQS9OCF5ZBV58_PtPg
If you would change /ME/ to any user which has his MUSIC posted as public, you WILL be able to access that data with Graph API.
Now try to get an access token to your APP and call the same Graph API method with generated access token, the returned data is empty JSON object.
Whats’ the difference between these access tokens? How to obtain access token, that I could get public information using Graph API?
I was thinking that logging in your APP is the highest possible access token and the only higher token is token with specified permissions...
Any guidelines would be great :)
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/permissions/
I believe the difference is that you can specify additional permissions in a scope parameter,
so if you wanted to read a user's feed you would have to specify read_stream. I was trying to accomplish this with an access token from a server-side authentication flow in ruby, but the access token only allowed to me to navigate accross a certain portion of graph.facebook.com/user_id/feed? requests. If you get any insights or comes across a solution shoot it my way too, if you can.

Help understanding how to integrate the FB Graph API in my App

I'm working to enable my app to hit the FB Graph API to look up data on a user. I want to do this in a way that is app focused meaning it isn't based on a user signed into my app. It's a relationship between the app & the FB Graph API.
My understanding is I can do that with the APPLICATION ACCESS TOKEN is that right?
If I use my app access token here:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=born#gmail.com&type=user&access_token=208131059208382|xFN8da1tIDxuuMp8hoRtGs3l0aM
I get an error:
{
"error": {
"type": "OAuthException",
"message": "An access token is required to request this resource."
}
}
Why is that?
Can I use my personal FB account to hit the API for the purposes of the app?
When a user oAuth's in to an app, how long does the access token last? Is it something I can hard code in my app so I can hit the FB graph api?
Thanks
For a lot of things on Facebook, you have to have a valid session access token from the user. What this means is, the access token you get from a user must be used to access a resource. This is especially true when pulling data about the user out of the graph. The access token that FB gives you when the user loads your application typically lasts for an hour (if I recall correctly). The session object FB gives you tells you the expire time on the token, though.
If you need to access the data for a user in an offline manner, you could ask the user for the offline_access extended permission. Doing this makes Facebook give you an indefinite access token, which doesn't ever expire (unless the user changes their password). That allows you to query the graph on the user's behalf whenever you feel like doing it.
The search feature doesn't require an access token if you're performing a standard search, or a page search, etc. But it does require a valid access token when you're searching for users. I assume this is to keep people from hammering the search and crawling public user data with a bot.
You can follow the instruction in
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
take a look at https://github.com/michaelbaldry/fb_graph_canvas - It's a barebones canvas application that you can test locally. It uses fb_graph and is about as simple as can.

How to get the access_token for Facebook with no application

On the documentation page for Facebook Graph API there are a lot of example links such as https://graph.facebook.com/me/likes?access_token=SOME_AT
Could anyone explain how the access_token for these links are generated?
All I've read in the documentation were about getting access_token only for applications, but on that page everyone could get an access_token without one.
You can use the graph API to get public information. People set privacy settings on facebook, so to prevent social freaks from stalking you, they(fb) created Autorisation.What I believe is that on the documentation, they are generating the access token using the Developers App. You can generate this Access token by making an application and asking a user to Authorise your application to access his data using OAUTH dialogs. Usually people reading at developer.facebook.com have enabled the Developers app so it easily opens your information.
The Graph API as such allows you to
easily access all public information
about an object. For example,
https://graph.facebook.com/btaylor
(Bret Taylor) returns all the public
information about Bret. For example a
user's first name, last name and
profile picture are publicly
available.
To get additional information about a
user, you must first get their
permission. At a high level, you need
to get an access token for the
Facebook user. After you obtain the
access token for the user, you can
perform authorized requests on behalf
of that user by including the access
token in your Graph API requests:
The access_token in these links are generated using your Facebook identity and an application ID (presumable associated to "developers.facebook.com"). If you go to the same page with another Facebook account, you will see different access tokens.