I'm making a webpage/SEO checking page, where I can put in a URL and it will tell me various facts about the page.
I'd like to be able to tell if there is a Facebook page associated with the URL. Is this possible using the API, or by other means?
For instance, https://www.facebook.com/focalstrategy links to http://www.focalstrategy.com/ on the info tab – is there a way to go the other way and enter the URL and find the page(s)?
(Bonus points – anyone know of a way to do the same for Twitter accounts)
I don't think this is possible. Using the API, you can retrieve info about the url:
http://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://www.focalstrategy.com/
Would return:
{
"id": "http://www.focalstrategy.com/",
"shares": 38
}
Now I'm note sure if using the Open Graph Meta Tags would help return more data (still not what you need), but here is my website info without trailing slash:
http://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://www.masteringapi.com
Would return:
{
"id": "109784969102047",
"name": "MasteringAPI.com",
"picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/276619_109784969102047_474156823_s.jpg",
"link": "http://www.masteringapi.com/",
"likes": 25,
"category": "Website",
"website": "http://www.masteringapi.com",
"description": "Master Facebook, Google and Twitter APIs! Learn Facebook Application Development Now!",
"can_post": true
}
Related
I'm building a voting application on my new website, cabinethardware.org. I'd like the voting to be done in such a way that when someone votes for a project (to receive a $1000 rebuilding grant) that they are encouraged to plug the project via social networks. My programmer has had difficulty with the application, and it occurred to me that one way of doing it is to just put like, tweet and G+ buttons on the site and add them together. So if a project gets 24 likes, 12 tweets, and 18 G+, it would have 64 votes. It doesn't bother me if someone votes on all three engines.
Before a project is eligible for a grant, it must receive 100 votes. My question is, is there a way that I can aggregate the likes, tweets, and G+ so that I can see on the backend how many votes each project has, without going to each project and adding them up by hand? Also, I'd like to display to customers the combined total.
Does anyone know of a way to combine the count of these three?
For Google+, you would only need to perform one API call to the Google+ APIs that would be searching the Google+ public data. Searching the Google+ public data is demonstrated in the API explorer.
The post response contains information about reshares and +1s:
"verb": "post",
"object": {
"objectType": "note",
"content": "Setting up a server-side flow project that accesses Google+ data using the .NET stack can be a little tricky, I walk you through it in this blog post.",
"url": "https://plus.google.com/109716647623830091721/posts/g8LjdGAXdDc",
"replies": {
"totalItems": 0,
"selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/activities/z125srm50lf1slxrd04cfftatqyoglnoqio/comments"
},
"plusoners": {
"totalItems": 6,
"selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/activities/z125srm50lf1slxrd04cfftatqyoglnoqio/people/plusoners"
},
"resharers": {
"totalItems": 0,
"selfLink": "https://www.googleapis.com/plus/v1/activities/z125srm50lf1slxrd04cfftatqyoglnoqio/people/resharers"
},
For Facebook, you can use the Pages API to count likes for your page, you can experiment with this in their API explorer.
The following data shows their response data:
{
"about": "Build and distribute amazing social apps on Facebook. https://developers.facebook.com/ ",
"company_overview": "Facebook Platform enables anyone to build social apps on Facebook, mobile, and the web.\n\n",
"is_published": true,
"talking_about_count": 39241,
"username": "FacebookDevelopers",
"website": "http://developers.facebook.com",
"were_here_count": 0,
"category": "Product/service",
"id": "19292868552",
"name": "Facebook Developers",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/FacebookDevelopers",
"likes": 952596,
"cover": {
"cover_id": "10151121467948553",
"source": "https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/299374_10151121467948553_45631061_n.png",
"offset_y": 0
}
}
Likes are just a member in the response data.
For twitter, you can query for mentions of a user with their search API and passing a search string for the user as #user. A count of the objects within results is going to be your mention count. The response data is a little too much to paste in here but here's an example query using their API.
I have an issue with Facebook OpenGraph API. Whenever I request data using either '/home' or '/feed', none of the posts from Instagram showed up.
I've been googling around and apparently some people raised the same issue with no solution yet. And I read some that the issue not only affecting posts from Instagram, but also other third-party app/device/platform.
Even the ticket posted on Facebook's dev page seems somewhat dead (no continuation). Link: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/110563582419837/
If any of you guys also stumbled on this issue and has some ideas/pointers/links, please do share and let's discuss it.
Much appreciated. Cheers!
There are two bug reports in Facebook's bug tracker about this:
https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/110563582419837 and https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/202119973248747
The core reason is that the photos are attached to Open Graph actions as User Generated Photos and not via the regular Photo upload API.
As such, the regular photos permissions don't grant access to them and you need the user to specifically allow you the access their Open Graph activity for the app that posted the actions. The bug reports above are accepted on the basis that this appears to be an oversight in the case of actions with user generated photos, but it could also be by design in which case what i've outlined below as a workaround would be the only supported way to do this:
If you specifically need to request Instagram (or another Open Graph photos app) photos for a user, you can ask for Permission to access the actions posted by that app.
For Instagram photos you can do this by requesting the user_actions:instapp permission and once you've done that the Instagram Photos album will no longer appear to be empty, and the Instagram activity will appear in the feed connection.
To find out the namespace for an arbitrary app, access https://graph.facebook.com/<APP ID> and look for the namespace field,
e.g. for instagram, a call to https://graph.facebook.com/124024574287414/?fields=id,namespace returns:
{
"id": "124024574287414",
"namespace": "instapp"
}
A sample photo from my own /feed connection, retrieved with the read_stream, user_photos, user_actions:instapp permissions, is:
{
"data": [
{
"id": "[SNIPPED]",
"from": {
"name": "[SNIPPED]",
"id": "[SNIPPED]"
},
"picture": "[SNIPPED]",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=[SNIPPED]",
"icon": "https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yb/x/StEh3RhPvjk.gif",
"privacy": {
"value": ""
},
"type": "photo",
"object_id": "[SNIPPED]",
"application": {
"name": "Instagram",
"namespace": "instapp",
"id": "124024574287414"
},
"created_time": "2013-01-07T17:33:04+0000",
"updated_time": "2013-01-07T17:33:04+0000",
"comments": {
"count": 0
}
},
I can also access the /photos connection of my 'Instagram Photos' album with the same permissions, and can access all Instagram 'take' actions (i.e the photos) at /me/instapp:take
Facebook employee here. Looking at the internal task that is tracking this issue, all I can say at this time is that this is an issue that we are currently aware and investigating into. If you would like to be notified of any updates, be sure to click "subscribe" on the bug report.
For the time being, I recommend finding the album ID of the user named "Instagram Photos", then calling a GET request to /INSTAGRAM_ALBUM_ID/photos to get their Instagram photos. On the Graph API Explorer tool, I confirm that I am able to fetch all of my instagram pictures. Since my album is public, you should be able to view them as well.
I have changed the way my facebook page tab app asks for permissions.
I was using the javascript approach with FB Dialog and now I am using the redirect approach (in which the user is redirected to a FB page where the permissions are asked and then is redirected back to the facebook page tab).
The reason of the change is that I believe this approach will present
less bugs and issues than using the javascript dialogs.
When using the redirect approach, I need to specify the URL that the user will be redirected after providing permissions. I would like that this url was the url of the facebook page tab with the app installed.
When building the url of redirect, I know the current page_id and my app_id. With these info, I need to build the facebook page tab url, which should look like this:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/PAGE-SLUG/{#APP_ID}?sk=app_{#APP_ID}
The problem is that I don't know what is the PAGE-SLUG. The tests I have run with the url above (using the PAGE-SLUG as anything) end up redirecting to the correct URL. However, knowing that Facebook is a very unstable platform, I would like to know it there is any better approach to building this redirect url.
EDIT: the above approach has a problem. The redirect loses the SSL protocol and uses the HTTP link when the facebook user doesn't use SSL by default.
It's very simple actually, you can call the Graph API with PHP like so:
$facebook->api("/{PAGE_ID}");
// change {PAGE_ID} to the page id you are redirecting back to
the return value is a json array with "link" in it -> that's the URL you are looking for :-)
Example Return:
{
"id": "XXXXXXXXX",
"name": "My Demo Page",
"picture": "",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Demo-Page/XXXXXXXXX",
"likes": 123456,
"category": "Product/service",
"can_post": true,
"type": "page"
}
You can also query by the page name, if you know it, for example:
querying the Graph API with:
$facebook->api("/coca-cola");
Will result in:
{
"id": "40796308305",
"name": "Coca-Cola",
"picture": "https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/174560_40796308305_2093137831_s.jpg",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/coca-cola",
"likes": 40680159,
"cover": {
"cover_id": "10150682306963306",
"source": "https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s720x720/416803_10150682306963306_40796308305_9337341_812683101_n.jpg",
"offset_y": 0
},
"category": "Food/beverages",
"is_published": true,
"website": "http://www.coca-cola.com",
"username": "coca-cola",
"founded": "1886",
"description": "Created in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia, by Dr. John S. Pemberton, Coca-Cola was first offered as a fountain beverage at Jacob's Pharmacy by mixing Coca-Cola syrup with carbonated water. \n\nCoca-Cola was patented in 1887, registered as a trademark in 1893 and by 1895 it was being sold in every state and territory in the United States. In 1899, The Coca-Cola Company began franchised bottling operations in the United States. \n\nCoca-Cola might owe its origins to the United States, but its popularity has made it truly universal. Today, you can find Coca-Cola in virtually every part of the world.",
"about": "The Coca-Cola Facebook Page is a collection of your stories showing how people from around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today.",
"location": {
"latitude": -33.816989983333,
"longitude": 150.84844081667
},
"can_post": true,
"checkins": 80,
"talking_about_count": 297576,
"type": "page"
}
Edit:
A more clear explanation:
Call the Graph API with the current page id.
If the result is no false, then the redirect_uri would be the link
returned from the call.
Otherwise, the redirect_uri should be yourdomain.com/middle-page.php?page_id=XXX
If the user then accepts the application and the redirect_uri is the middle page,
you then call the Graph API again, but this time, you use the Access Token received
from Facebook. now you should have the real page url and you can add any additional
details you need (like ?sk_app=APP_ID)
According to Facebook own documentation, It's not clear what happens if the user decided not no accept the application. I think the user will redirect back to the redirect_uri, which then you can check if you have "user_id" in the signed_request, but I'm not 100% sure... Creating a simple app demo and checking :-)
We're working on developing a program that will (hopefully) automatically swap out creative with new creative once a certain like threshold is met (i.e. if 100 people like the page, something new appears). Can we add coding so our system is able to tell how many "likes" are generated? I know that the number of likes are displayed, I'm just not sure if there is a way for a program to actually read how many likes there are.
I don't see if in any of the Facebook attributes in the developer's platform.
What you'll have to do is acquire an access token for your page and then query the facebook platform for the number of likes periodically (possibly with a cron job of sorts).
You can read more about how to get the page access token at this URL
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
Facebook has given us a great took to help us mine all the data it holds - its called the Graph API Explorer and with it you can see what data will be returned when you query the API. When you query the API with only the page_id you'll get a response similar to this :
{
"id": "XXXXXXXXX",
"name": "My Awesome Page",
"picture": "foo.jpg",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/pages/XXXXXXXX",
"likes": 345,
"category": "Product/service",
"website": "XXXXXXX",
"founded": "2011",
"description": "...",
}
For more information about how to use the Graph API you can see this link :
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/
Facebook does provide good documentation:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/page/
As you can see there, there is a field "likes" containing the number (count) of likes for a page.
I am trying to learn and create a Facebook API on the go. However, I haven't found any page on the developer pages that specifies the scope of the Facebook API in great detail. I understand public information can be accessed using Graph API. But at the same time understand that further access is possible, not sure how much though.
Is there anyway to access the 'Edit news feed options' of a user that authorizes an application?
I don't really understand what you mean by "scope", but the Graph API is not more than a series of URLs to contact the facebook servers with queries and obtain answers in form of JSON objects.
You can start learning by looking at the reference for the API here:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/
There are unofficial APIs for every language you can imagine, for example java: http://code.google.com/p/facebook-java-api/ , c#: http://facebooksdk.codeplex.com/ , etc.
To read the news feed, you can access it by:
https://graph.facebook.com/me/home?access_token=TOKEN (where TOKEN is the access token)
Fb will respond with a JSON object similar to the one pasted below.
{
"data": [
{
"id": "11111_1111111111,
"from": {
"name": "Name",
"id": "11111111"
},
"message": "SOME_MESSAGE",
"actions": [
{
"name": "Comment",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/111111/posts/11111"
},
{
"name": "Like",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/11111/posts/11111"
}
],
"type": "status",
"created_time": "2011-04-20T20:19:04+0000",
"updated_time": "2011-04-20T20:19:04+0000"
},
etc etc etc
],
"paging": {
"previous": "https://graph.facebook.com/me/home?access_token=TOKEN",
"next": "https://graph.facebook.com/me/home?access_token=TOKEN"
}
}
Having that, you can use the ID for the person or the message to perform new queries, as explained in the FB API page:
All of the objects in the Facebook
social graph are connected to each
other via relationships. Bret Taylor
is a fan of the Coca-Cola page, and
Bret Taylor and Arjun Banker are
friends. We call those relationships
connections in our API. You can
examine the connections between
objects using the URL structure
https://graph.facebook.com/ID/CONNECTION_TYPE.
The connections supported for people
and pages include:
Almost every information on FB is accessible through the Graph API, provided the user authorized the app with the rigth permissions:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions/