I'm able to get an access token that's good for 60 days, but I'm not able to get the expiration time extended. I'm doing this to be able to get access to Facebook pages through a single user. Here's my process.
I make a call to:
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?response_type=token&client_id=APP_ID&scope=read_stream,publish_stream,manage_pages,read_insights,create_event&redirect_uri=REDIRECT_URL
I then call to this URL using the token I got from the URL above:
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
I've tried this multiple times over the weekend, and in every single instance, I get the same access token, but the expiration is not updated. I've done this by accessing the URLs in my browser.
Am I missing anything to be able to renew the expiration?
I think the page admin user will have to come back to your app in that 60 days to get a new access token with the extended time on it. I don't think you can (or should) be allowed to extend the access token by application only.
See: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/offline-access-deprecation/
Note: The user must access your application before you're able to get
a valid "authorization code" to be able to make the server-side oAuth
call again. Apps will not be able to setup a background/cron job that
tries to automatically extend the expiration time, because the
"authorization code" is short-lived and will have expired.
I just encountered this problem. The issue ended up being that "deprecate offline access" was disabled in my FB application. When disabled, the extending tokens always returned a short lived token. When enabled, I was able to get long lived access tokens.
The offline access has been deprecated by the facebook developers, but you can still extend your access token life upto 60 days by passing your app id, app secret and current access token to the following url:
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
Note: The EXISTING_ACCESS_TOKEN must be a valid accesss token(not expired one).
Related
I have been trying to create a never-expiring Facebook Token (ideally programatically) and have not been able to do so, then, without really trying, on a different Facebook Application, I managed to create a token which, according to
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/accesstoken?version=v2.5&q={TOKEN}
will never expire and I can't replicate it on any other Facebook Apps or for any other Facebook Tokens.
I can programatically (PHP) take the short lived token (1/2 hours) and extend it to 60 days, but I wanted to ideally get a never-expire token.
I guess I'm not asking how I managed to do it, but I can't find any explanation or documentation nor reason as to why I was able to achieve this for one token, but not any others.
Is it something in the App itself while it was created? Is there actually a way to get a never-expiring token, even though I've followed many of the guides online yet can only get a 1/2 hour token converted to 60 days?
Is there actually a way to get a never-expiring token
No, not really. Even what you think is a never-expiring token can expire - f.e. if the user who created it changes their account password.
I guess I'm not asking how I managed to do it, but I can't find any explanation or documentation nor reason as to why I was able to achieve this for one token, but not any others.
It is not documented, because Facebook wants you to use the 60 day tokens, when you app is acting on behalf of a personal user profile. They removed offline_access permission ages ago, specifically so that apps the user has long forgotten about can’t act on their behalf or still access their data any more.
So if you are writing an app that acts on behalf of users, you should really rather make do with the 60 day token - that should be enough for most cases.
Now what you are seeing with your token here, is a side effect of how Facebook has implemented extended page access tokens. Those do not have a default expiry - but they need to be invalidated when the user is removed as a page admin. Therefor, they are internally tied to the user token that was used to request the page token. User token gets invalidated - page access token becomes invalid together with it. And that in turn requires that the user token does not automatically expire after 60 days.
So, when you extend a user token that includes manage_pages permission, you will get an extended token with “unlimited” validity. But, again, that is a side effect of current implementation only, and can change in the future.
I'm making a facebook application that will scan a users' news feed on a daily basis - but the offline access token has been deprecated.
I know that the access token can be extended to 60 days. So if a user doesn't use my application for 60 days, would I be not able to access their information after that?
I read the developers section but didn't understand it properly.
That's exactly the point. You'll need to code your app to run through an authentication flow if the access token expires. Remember, the access token can expire for other (legitimate) reasons, other than timeout. If you're not asking for new permissions, and need to grab a new access tokens, the flow should happen without any user actions required.
You'll need to code for access tokens failing regardless of offline_access - so do it right! :)
If I requested and acquired an access token on, say, the 1st of March, and extended it on 30 days later, will it be valid for another 60 days, or does it require reauthorization from the end user?
We are implementing an autopost functionality, which is triggered by an event inside our own application. Therefore, the end user will not be able to present their cookie to Facebook in order to validate their identity. We need to make sure that we always have a valid access token.
The official Facebook documentation is quite vague on this particular subject.
How are you obtaining the access tokens? Server side flow or client side?
What exactly do you mean by "extending" the tokens? Are you referring to the "new end point" provided by facebook because of the offline_access deprecation?
You are right, facebook are pretty vague about it saying:
If you would like to renew a still valid access_token, you will have
to get a new client-side access token first and then call the same
endpoint below. The returned access_token with the newly extended
expiration time may or may not be the same as the previously granted
extended access_token.
That means that you can not count on the extended token to actually be extended.
More than that though, is that you can't just extend the token with out any user interaction. If the user haven't used your app in the last 60 days you can not extend the token for him.
You can use the App Access Token if you want to publish on users behalf. The App Access Token does not expire unless you de-authorize it yourself. When using your App Access Token you have to specifically indicate the user id you are publishing for - /12345678/photos. You can't use /me/photos. You can read more about this here.
This is the access token associated with my Facebook application -- the thing that comes back from https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=APP_ID&client_secret=APP_SECRET. Can I get this once from FB and save it away somewhere for future use, or do I need to refresh it on a regular basis?
Access Token Tool - Facebook Developers
App tokens do not expire and should be kept secret as they are related to your app secret.
I don't know for sure, but since the documentation does not state that you get back an expiration time for the access token, I guess that it's an educated guess that it does not expire.
But why does it matter? the application authentication process is much simpler than the one with users, so just save the token somewhere (db, memory) and then try an api call, if it fails just issue one call to obtain a new token, save that, and continue as usual.
If you want a token to manage a page, never-expiring token can be obtained by
Get user token
Exchange user token to long-living token (Valid for 30days)
Obtain a page token with this user token (This page token is not going to expire)
When you check the token you've got, check it on Debugger. You will now see 'Expires Never'.
Documentation is on Facebook Developers ,Scenario 5: Page Access Tokens
My app access token does not seem to have changed for just under a month. I do not know if it changes. For fun I just changed my app secret...
My app access token then immediately changed and when I try to use the old one I get a
HTTP 400 error with a message body...
{"error":{"message":"Invalid OAuth access token signature.","type":"OAuthException","code":190}}
My advice is save the access token and use it. Unless you get the message above in which case obtain a new one and use that. One thing that I have not checked yet is if you get the same result if the user access token (that you may be querying) has expired instead.
For each and every user token (which is what you're getting from your link), there is an expiration date. Take one of those tokens to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug and debug it. You will see that generally they expire within 60 minutes or so.
To extend that user token, call the exchange command (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/offline-access-deprecation/) to get it to become a 60 day token. That user token has to be still valid (not expired) to do this.
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...