Can the Facebook API be used to create link posts with summaries? - facebook

Question

When adding a link post in Facebook, a nice looking description (containing a snippet of text from the linked page) and thumbnail are automatically added to the post.
Is there a way to do this automatically using the Facebook API? I am inclined to think that there is not, because posts added by IFTTT, a popular web application that uses the Facebook API, do not contain descriptions. I am unclear as to whether this is a limitation with the Facebook API, and whether there is any way around it.

Answer 1

Yes, it's possible. You can use the Graph Api Method /profile_id/feed. The method receives the arguments message, picture, link, name, caption, description, source, place and tags. The facebook organize the parameters in a "nice looking summary and thumbnail".
You can get more information in the publishing section in the link http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/
In c#:
public static bool Share(string oauth_token, string message, string name, string link, string picture)
{
try
{
string url =
"https://graph.facebook.com/me/feed" +
"?access_token=" + oauth_token;
StringBuilder post = new StringBuilder();
post.AppendFormat("message={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(message));
post.AppendFormat("&name={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(name));
post.AppendFormat("&link={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(link));
post.AppendFormat("&picture={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(picture));
string result = Post(url, post.ToString());
}
catch (Exception)
{
return false;
}
return true;
}
private static string Post(string url, string post)
{
WebRequest webRequest = WebRequest.Create(url);
webRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
webRequest.Method = "POST";
byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(post);
webRequest.ContentLength = bytes.Length;
Stream stream = webRequest.GetRequestStream();
stream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
stream.Close();
WebResponse webResponse = webRequest.GetResponse();
StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(webResponse.GetResponseStream());
return streamReader.ReadToEnd();
}
UPDATE:
Open graph protocol meta tags: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraphprotocol/