I have an idea to develop a Facebook app which notifies the user through SMS when his/her friends come online. The user can pre-select the friends he/she wanted to get SMS notifications of.
This is my first attempt at developing for Facebook so I have zero experience and knowledge about the platform. I just want to know if my idea for such an app is possible? Does Facebook have an API for SMSes? Or do they let 3rd party messaging APIs (such as this one I came across) to work with them.
Thank you.
A Facebook app is actually ran off of your server and you can do anything that you want as long as you stay inside the limits of what you requested as far as information the app needs. As far and getting the information it is relatively easy. I made a extremely complicated app in 3 days. Once you read and get how to pull certain information, the rest is cake walk
Related
I am currently attempting to retrieve the news feed from my Facebook home feed to include into an app. I know this used to be able to be done with the API however I have heard that it has since been removed. Is there any other way that you know of that would work or has it been added back into the API? It doesn't make sense why they would remove it.
No, there is no way to get a user’s feed via API. That used to be possible in the very early days (API v1), but has long since been removed.
It doesn't make sense why they would remove it.
Apart from user privacy (I don’t want my posts getting analyzed by some shady app with a developer located in $godKnowsWhere, just because they appeared on the feed of a friend of mine who might be using questionable apps), Facebook considers this a “core feature” – and 3rd-party apps are not supposed to replicate those in the first place. Facebook wants to make money from showing me ads when I view my feed, so allowing any other app to perform the same functionality would just mean loss of revenue.
I'm facing the situation where I need to programmatically create multiple Facebook Messenger Apps to different chatbots. Pretty much something like ManyChat and ChatFuel. Can someone shed some light on how is it possible?
There's a thread on it from 2011 but I've been uncessful on finding documentation on these old Facebook API's.
Create a facebook application programmatically
Thanks!
There is no API for this. As ceejayoz mentioned, ManyChat and ChatFuel just run one app and use their customer's account with the rights manage_pages and subscribed_apps to subscribe the app to the customer's page.
That said, there is just one endpoint where all traffic is delivered to and the software has to route every message to this endpoint accordingly to the right page (using receiver_id in the payload).
Keep in mind that while you want to run several apps in parallel, you have to approve all of them. Without this approval, the app can not be reached from customers.
For more insight, see the FB docs:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/?locale=en_US
And https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/page/subscribed_apps
My company has been developing a Facebook Messenger app that will send reservation reminders to hotel guests before their check in date. I have submitted the app to use the "pages_messaging_subscriptions", but have had my submission be denied.
I am confused about how I am supposed to move forward from here. The response from the process was "Your Messenger experience does not fall into the productivity use case that you submitted for.". One of the use cases for a productivity app is sending reminders. This is exactly what my companies app will be doing.
How do I move forward from here? Has anyone had a similar experience? There does not seem to be any way to follow up with the reviewer to get further feedback.
As it seems your use case of "sending reminders" falls into Facebook's Bot "Productivity" category, my suggestion would be to re-submit the application again.
If Facebook sent some sort of response regarding exactly why your application was rejected, look at that. If there isn't a response from Facebook regarding why it was rejected (other than some generic "because we said so"), after re-submitting your application - assuming it gets denied again - I would try to get into contact with Facebook to see the exact reason it was rejected, and work with them on a solution that allows you to get your application/bot published.
Unfortunately, as I don't work for Facebook, I can't give you a 100% accurate answer, but instead what I think would be the best course of action in this situation.
I have a question about increasing visibility of Facebook app notifications.
As far as I can tell, there are only 2 places where Facebook app requests appear for users who don't click the "Apps & Games" section - in the top right section (https://skitch.com/nicksoman/8172w/facebook) or in the jewel (https://skitch.com/nicksoman/81737/2-facebook) - I believe the wording is a bit different on this one if recipients haven't used the app, as it references an invite rather than a request.
As other have noted, neither of these channels provides any context around the request. In the past I've seen context for apps like BranchOut and FarmVille, but I can't replicate this behavior by sending invites from these apps now (can anyone)?
Has anyone found a Facebook-approved way to either provide more context around these app requests or make them more visible?
I'm familiar with the history of Facebook tweaking channels due to abusive apps - just want to make sure I'm current on best practices today.
Are you referring to users who haven't authorized your app or users who did?
Basically, facebook calls this Social Channels and you have a few options, again, depending on if the user is already using your app or not.
If the user is using your app, you have the bookmarks bar which can be used by issuing a App-generated requests.
If the user isn't using your app then a friend of his that is using your app can send him a User-generated request.
You can and should encourage your users to publish your app stories to their friends' feed and/or to send them to friends.
There's that "Automatic Channels" which is discussed in the first link in this answer.
More options are to use the Social Plugins in your website, and to have a mobile version of your app.
Let's say I have app on iPhone and Windows Phone 7. How to share (ex. Note) between my both apps, regardless any platform.
Update
Guess this question is very broad, my bad.
Be more specific, I want the user to go through his contact list and share through my app. How do I identify if the other user installed my app? and what platform he/she using?
Using the contact list isn't a good way to "share" in this regard.
You're asking two questions here:
How to build a system to share data between two mobile clients, irrespective of platform?
How to best enable users to find their friends to share data?
Let's start with the 2nd question.
I would leverage services like Twitter and Facebook and have your app connect with your users facebook account. This is a well known approach, and avoids having to roll your own account system.
With facebook as an example:
Facebook connect, you can get the facebookID of your user, as well as their friends facebookID. You'll need a backend webservice which you can query users by fbID.
When a user opts to use their facebook account, store their FacebookID on your backend service. Then using facebook's api's get a list of their friends facebookID's. Your app will lookup each ID using your backend service, and if it finds one, then you know that friend has also installed the app, and connected it to facebook.
So if Alice installed your app, connects to facebook, and she is friends with Bob, who also has installed your app, your back end service would return that Bob's facebookID is known to your app, and thus the two of them can share to each other using some protocol that you design.
If their friend's ID isn't known to your system, I would send them a facebook message, or post on thier wall with a restful link that invites them to check out the note you want to share on the web, and place the link to the app on the same page.
Due to the high level of your question, this answer is a bit of a 20,000ft view, and assumes you know how to build a web service.
If you want to see a great example of an app that makes use Facebook and or Twitter to find friends who also use the same app, I recommend checking out Groupme. It's free, and available for WP7, iPhone, and Android. It's a group SMS app, and uses your contact list, facebook, and twitter, to setup friends.
For the first question, you'll need to make use of a backend webservice. User would elect to share either in-app, or by posting to their facebook, with a weblink. In-app sharing, I would use an inbox approach. A user posts a message to their friend, and it gets stored in a queue. The app periodically checks the users queue to see if any new "shares" have been posted. If so, get that data, and present it to the user. Your back end service should also take advantage of newer app concepts like push notifications, because thats what users expect.
I would suggest using a web service such as Parse. This will allow you to focus on your app development and not worry about server coding.
Currently they do not have a Windows Phone 7 SDK but it is just a matter of making the REST requests manually to the service.