So, I want to build a web app that posts let say funny cat pics to a users Facebook wall. The user allows the web app to do this via the publish_actions command. Yeah, I know this sounds spammy but it isn't.
Now, on Facebook Developer documentation pages it's described as follows:
"Enables your app to post content, comments and likes to a user's
stream and requires extra permissions from a person using your app.
So, to me this sounds that it's possible for an web app to publish content without the need for the user to grant every single update?
But, reading about it in the "Login Best Practices" section I read the following sentence:
When displaying the Log in with Facebook button, emphasize that
your app will not post to Facebook without people's permission
Source:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/checklist
So, my question is – is it or isn't it possible?
To my knowledge, the publish_actions permission allows your app to post to the user's wall without having facebook itself ask for permission again.
However, it is good ("best") practice to always make it explicitly clear inside your app that "by clicking here, I will post to your timeline".
Basically, this is Facebook saying that you should handle this asking inside your application, in a way that best fits your application's logic.
Related
I have a task to add links to a web page to enable the user to post a short message to Facebook. There may be multiple messages on the page, each with its own link. The intent is to launch a Facebook share dialog pre-populated with the text of the message which the user can then modify, accept and/or reject.
I'm pretty new to programming anything for Facebook. I'm fairly confused and am not sure what to ask first, so I'll go with a very basic question: what's the simplest way to do this? I gather from Facebook's documentation that I probably have to use the Javascript SDK and/or the Open Graph technology. Is this correct, or is there another option I'm missing? Is there a really clear example of this kind of solution anywhere?
Thanks!
You have to create a facebook app first so you have your app_id and app_secret.
After that you need to request permissions to the user to publish_actions. If the user accepts, you'll receive a token (you need to store it in db). If you need to publish actions in a user page instead of his own page, you also need the manage_pages permission.
You need to read the facebook graph api documentation to understand how all this works.
The access token you receive expires after certain time. So, when you receive it, you can ask for a long lived token. The page tokens doesn't expire.
Facebook evaluates your app before approving it to be in production. They ask a couple of questions about how you'll use the user's token and data. You might have to put pictures of the flow too.
As far as I know, Facebook won't allow you to send pre populated messages to the user's wall. They user has to write it.
Hope it helped a bit!
I am looking for Like Button to be shown in my ios native app, users of that app have already connected to app via facebook account.
there are several questions related to Facebook Like Button on stackoverflow but those are not specific to authorized single facebook page of the app.
According to official doc of facebook, facebook pages can not be liked via built-in action o open graph api.
But want only one official facebook page of that app to be liked by user when he hits like button. i don't want user to navigate away from the app or login again in web view to like facebook page.
is it possible to like app's facebook page without promoting user to log in again in webveiw?
Edit
Findings
1. https://stackoverflow.com/a/5837036/1632984
2. Comment by wallacer
"the general consensus does seem to be that you can't like a page on behalf of the user, however I just had an ios game like a page on my behalf. Extreme Road Trip successfully manages to get you to like their own page. I wish I'd paid more attention when I did it now..." – wallacer
This still can't be done directly using the graph api ( to the best of my knowledge ). What you can do is open a webview to the page you want the user to like. If you're rewarding their liking your app or something, when they close the webview (you'll have to provide a close button), you can use the graph api to check whether they like your app page. As far as I can tell this is the best current solution - and seems to be the approach taken by mobile games.
That said, I haven't used Facebook SDK 3 yet, so there may be something in there that could help you.
It appears that Liking a page on behalf of a user is still impossible. I've glanced over the iOS SDK Reference, and it doesn't seem like there is a built in mechanism to like anything.
However, in reading one of the other posts you linked to, and remembering that Facebook opened up the Like open graph action so app developers could allow their users to like content generated by their application...I found this link about built-in-actions (likes).
According to that link, you can post Like actions to your users by POSTing to https://graph.facebook.com/<user_id>/og.likes with the POST params for object (the open graph object URL you want to like on behalf of the user in this case your page's url. eg. www.facebook.com/yourpage) and access_token (obviously, for your user).
I'm not totally convinced that will work; though it is conceivable. My second thought would be to create an Open Graph Object for your page, and have all your users like that. Though, that is a little less ideal, as it removes the possibility of people finding your Page while they're on Facebook and would require you to put a lot more effort into getting likes for the Page via your website, application, etc.
I hope that helps a bit, good luck.
Do you know if is there any way to collect last user's post on personal wall/timeline?
I need to know how many and which youtube videos has been shared by an user, reading them from his open graph profile.
I've never wrote any facebook app, but using the Open Graph Explorer seems that this kind of information is available if the user has set to "public" the privacy options of a post that contains a Youtube video.
My question is: could a third party app ask for the permission to read that kind of information? Could it have access to these posts also if they are not set as "public" by their owners?
EDIT: Could an app have access to user's posts like another friend of that user?
You can read the user's wall by creating an app with the read_stream permission and after the user grant you access by hitting the me/feed connection. But creating a 'listening' tool app is not recommended, if your app has no value for its users then you may need to rethink your app mission.
I just created last week an App and I've read that offline access doesn't work with newly created apps.(I haven't found any tutorial on the web. I am really new to facebook apps)
with this new change in facebook, I don't know how to use the current thing.
I badly need this feature because I don't want the user keeps logging-in in facebook everytime he visits and posts a status in my site as well in his facebook wall. I just want the user to be stayed connected and be able to post on his wall automatically thru my site once he authorized my app.
Thank you.
There are very clear and simple instructions on the following documentation to explain what you need to do to switch to long-life access tokens:
https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/
Also, from your description, it sounds like you are spamming and breaking Facebook Platform Policies. Users will hate any app that automatically posts on their behalf, so I recommend you do not do that, as either people will stop using your app or they'll report it and it'll get banned.
I'd like to know if there is a possibility to check (using Graph API or any other way) whether given user likes / shares a specific link. Probably I'll have this user's facebook ID or facebook login, but my site is non-Facebook application. Actually it's Dot Net Nuke portal (target: .NET with MS SQL Server) with part of it being avaliable as Facebook app, but certainly not greater part of it, so the solution should be out of Facebook Connect, although it's not a showstopper if it's necessary.
We'll be giving points to users who share/like most of links that we serve in our portal and such possibility would be a great help to make a ranking.
Another option we consider is making some kind of "wrapper" or proxy for FB like / share buttons which will at first save some data in our database (probably - this user clicked on like for this link) and then go on with standard FB like / share route. Did anybody of You tried such solution?
If You have any other suggestion on the subject, please, post them, we'll be really thankful.
It is possible to know if a user has LIKED a site or not. You can get all user's likes with Graph API (you need user_likes permission). Take a look at the docs: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/
I'm not sure if you can know if he has shared your site, but you could try by parsing his wall with the read_stream permission and then look for your site name/URL post by post.
For just general liking of items on your site, you can use a Facebook Social Plugin. However, you won't be able to associate (or really even access) user activity with users on your site without integrating Facebook Connect and creating a Facebook application for your site. At that point you can design with greater control all the possible user activity and interleave with your facebook calls other calls that affect users' accounts on your site.