In my web app, I need to post on users facebook feed while they are offline. I already store long lived access tokens for the users. But these tokens also expire after 60 days.
The FB docs mention that it is necessary to redirect users to the login flow to get a renewed access token.
I was thinking of checking the facebook session validity of user, whenever they login to my app and to give them the option of re-authenticating facebook in case their access token has expired.
However this will involve user interaction if the user is not currently logged in to his facebook account.
Are there any alternative solutions to look at. Also, how do sites like Quora manage posting to user's wall, without needing to re-authenticate facebook after every 60 days.
PS - I am using the latest facebook php sdk.
Simple Answer: It is not possible to extend the Access Token on the server. It would make the whole concept void.
Earlier there was a permission called "offline access", but they changed it to an extended token with maximum 60 days to avoid those things. You should NEVER post anything on the wall of the user without his authorization, for every single post. You are not allowed to autofill/prefill the message parameter anyway (see Facebook terms), it always must be 100% user generated.
About Quora: i don´t know what exactly they are doing, but i assume they refresh the Access Token whenever the user goes to their website.
I have started on developing a server side application that requires integration with facebook. My needs is an access token that will not expire, but unfortunately facebook has removed the offline_access feature and replaced with a long-live user access token that will last only 60 days.
I realise that there is an Application Access Token that will not expire. When I use it instead of the User Access Token to fetch the feed, I get must less information.
I have read from other sources that as long as relevant permissions are delegated, such as read_stream is given, using the application access token should allow the server-side application to access the users information that accepted the facebook application.
Am I mistaken ? Can anyone help to clarify ? Thanks
Thanks
Excerpt from: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/using-app-tokens/
While an App Access Token is largely for the purposes of publishing information back to Facebook on behalf of the user, there is a limited set of information that can be retrieved from Facebook using an App Access Token.
Basic Profile Info of a User (ID, Name, Username, Gender)
A User’s Friends and their IDs
Permissions granted by the User to your App
So there is a limited set of info you can get using an app access token. So you probably don't want to use it to get the user's feed.
So there's an app, let's say it's an app that is capable of delivering relevant news based on the user's choice done the first time he runs the app. Is there a way to post the news to the user's wall without having the user to be online and ideally as the app?
So on his/hers timeline it would look like this (edited image, not a real post from some app, it's just so you get what I mean):
When I use $facebook->api('/me', 'post'), it just creates a post as the user, which is not what I want and does not allow me to post when the user is not logged in.
You can use the server side authentication to get a long lived access token (60 days) which you can then use until the token times out. Then you'll need to have the user reengage with your app to get a new token.
You can get the same thing by using the client side authentication and then extending the token on the server side.
Another options which should work for you is to get an app access token (which does not expire) and ask the user for the publish_stream permission, then:
App access tokens can also be used to publish content to Facebook on
behalf of a user who has granted a publishing permission to your
application.
I created an APP on Facebook and using graph API explorer, I selected my app from app drop down box, requested access token with manage_pages, offline_access and publish_stream permissions.
Using this access token, I was successfully able to post message on page using restfb APIs but when I log out, it starts throwing The session is invalid error.
I read on few posts that offline_access is deprecated. Could someone tell me how to obtain permanent access token?
Thanks
Looking at the docs at: https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/ this is no longer possible.
Desktop applications will not be able to extend the life of an
existing access_token and the user must login to facebook once the
token has expired.
Otherwise, it is possible to request an access token with a longer expiration. Here are the directions: https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/#extend_token
What kind of Access Token do you need? There are three kinds, User AT, App AT and Page AT.
If you want User AT, it seems you are out of luck. I don't think it's possible anymore. You can only get to 60 days. However, if you need Page AT, you can get a permanent one. The difference is, Page Access Token only has access to a single facebook page.
Basically you need to get User Access Token first, with manage_pages permission. When you have one, you have to look at /{pageId}?fields=access_token for your page's id in Graph API.
For more info look at: facebook: permanent Page Access Token?
you will not get any permanent access token as Facebook developer blog explains. you will be given 60 days long lived access token. Before the expiration Facebook will notify you about the expiry and then you can renew it or you can build your own custom control to get the notification on token expiration which you can fetch from Facebook API.
I am playing around with the Oauth 2.0 authorization in Facebook and was wondering if the access tokens Facebook passes out ever expire. If so, is there a way to request a long-life access token?
After digging around a bit, i found this. It seems to be the answer:
Updated (11/April/2018)
The token will expire after about 60 days.
The token will be refreshed once per day, for up to 90 days, when the person using your app makes a request to Facebook's servers.
All access tokens need to be renewed every 90 days with the consent of the person using your app.
Facebook change announce (10/04/2018)
Facebook updated token expiration page (10/04/2018)
offline_access:
Enables your application to perform authorized requests on behalf of the user at any time. By default, most access tokens expire after a short time period to ensure applications only make requests on behalf of the user when the are actively using the application. This permission makes the access token returned by our OAuth endpoint long-lived.
Its a permission value requested.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions
UPDATE
offline_access permission has been removed a while ago.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/roadmap/completed-changes/offline-access-removal/
Try this may be it will help full for you
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?
client_id=127605460617602&
scope=offline_access,read_stream,user_photos,user_videos,publish_stream&
redirect_uri=http://www.example.com/
To get lifetime Access Token you have to use scope=offline_access
Meaning of scope=offline_access is that :-
Enables your application to perform authorized requests on behalf of
the user at any time. By default, most access tokens expire after a
short time period to ensure applications only make requests on behalf
of the user when the are actively using the application. This
permission makes the access token returned by our OAuth endpoint
long-lived.
But according to facebook future upgradation the offline_acees functionality will be deprecated for forever from the 3rd October, 2012.
and the user will be given 60 days long-lived access token and before expiration of the access token Facebook will notify or you can get your custom notification functionality fetching the expiration value from the Facebook Api..
Note that Facebook is now deprecating the offline_access permission in favor of tokens for which you can request an "upgrade" to the expiry. I'm just now dealing with this, myself, so I don't have much more to say, but this doc may help:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/offline-access-deprecation/
I came here with the same question as the OP, but the answers suggesting the use of offline_access are raising red flags for me.
Security-wise, getting offline access to a user's Facebook account is qualitatively different and far more powerful than just using Facebook for single sign on, and should not be used lightly (unless you really need it). When a user grants this permission, "the application" can examine the user's account from anywhere at any time. I put "the application" in quotes because it's actually any tool that has the credentials -- you could script up a whole suite of tools that have nothing to do with the web server that can access whatever info the user has agreed to share to those credentials.
I would not use this feature to work around a short token lifetime; that's not its intended purpose. Indeed, token lifetime itself is a security feature. I'm still looking for details about the proper usage of these tokens (Can I persist them? How do/should I secure them? Does Facebook embed the OAuth 2.0 "refresh token" inside the main one? If not, where is it and/or how do I refresh?), but I'm pretty sure offline_access isn't the right way.
Yes, they do expire. There is an 'expires' value that is passed along with the 'access_token', and from what I can tell it's about 2 hours. I've been searching, but I don't see a way to request a longer expiration time.
since i had the same problem - see the excellent post on this topic from ben biddington, who clarified all this issues with the wrong token and the right type to send for the requests.
http://benbiddington.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/facebook-graph-api-getting-access-tokens/
You can always refresh the user's access token every time the user logs into your site through facebook.
The offline access can't guarantee you get a life-long time access token, the access token changes whenever the user revoke you application access or the user changes his/her password.
Quoted from facebook http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
Note: If the application has not requested offline_access permission, the access token is time-bounded. Time-bounded access token also get invalidated when the user logs out of Facebook. If the application has obtained offline_access permission from the user, the access token does not have an expiry. However it gets invalidated whenever the user changes his/her password.
Assume you store the user's facebook uid and access token in a users table in your database,every time the user clicks on the "Login with facebook" button, you check the login statususing facebook Javascript API, and then examine the connection status from the response,if the user has connected to your site, you can then update the access token in the table.
Hit this to exchange a short living access token for a long living/non expiring(pages) one:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id=APP_ID&
client_secret=APP_SECRET&
grant_type=fb_exchange_token&
fb_exchange_token=EXISTING_ACCESS_TOKEN
log into facebook account and edit your application settings(account -> application setting ->additional permission of the application which use your account). uncheck the permission (Access my data when I'm not using the application(offline_access)). Then face will book issue a new token when you log in to the application.
Basic the facebook token expires about in a hour. But you can using 'exchange' token to get a long-lived token
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens
GET /oauth/access_token?
grant_type=fb_exchange_token&
client_id={app-id}&
client_secret={app-secret}&
fb_exchange_token={short-lived-token}
This is a fair few years later, but the Facebook Graph API Explorer now has a little info symbol next to the access token that allows you to access the access token tool app, and extend the API token for a couple of months. Might be helpful during development.
check the following things when you interact with facebook graph api.
1) Application connect URL should be the base of your "redirect_uri"
connect URL:- www.x-minds.org/fb/connect/
redirect_uri - www.x-minds.org/fb/connect/redirect
2) Your "redirect_uri" should be same in the both case (when you request for a verification code and request for an access_token)
redirect_uri - www.x-minds.org/fb/connect/redirect
3) you should encode the the argument when you request for an access_token
4) shouldn't pass the argument (type=client_cred) when you request for an access_token. the authorization server will issue a token without session part. we can't use this token with "me" alias in graph api. This token will have length of (40) but a token with session part will have a length of(81).
An access token without session part will work with some cases
eg: -https://graph.facebook.com/?access_token=116122545078207|EyWJJYqrdgQgV1bfueck320z7MM.
But Graph API with "me" alias will work with only token with session part.
I don't know when exactly the tokens expire, but they do, otherwise there wouldn't be an option to give offline permissions.
Anyway, sometimes requiring the user to give offline permissions is an overkill. Depending on your needs, maybe it's enough that the token remains valid as long as the website is opened in the user's browser. For this there may be a simpler solution - relogging the user in periodically using an iframe: facebook auto re-login from cookie php
Worked for me...