We implemented the Marketing API into our company's order management system to automate the creation of ad campaigns. A system user was created with the proper permissions, and the integration has been working. We're only using the API for our own ad account and pages, which we of course own. The "Facebook App" is set to live mode and has been for a couple weeks now.
But starting sometime today, we have been getting errors saying that the ads_read and ads_management permissions are required. And sure enough, they are indeed missing from the access token for the system user when I use the access token debugger.
What would have caused the system user to be missing these permissions all of a sudden? We are still on the dev tier and have only recently reached the 1,500 calls required to request standard access. That's the only thing I can think of so far, but is that the reason we suddenly don't have the proper permissions, or could it be something else? I haven't read anywhere in the documentation that we would lose these permissions upon reaching 1,500 calls, and I was planning on requesting the standard access next.
Also, I have read in various spots: "You do not need to submit your app if it will only be used by you or by a reduced number of people." That is actually our case, as we are only using a system user for the API calls, and there are only a few users tied to the Facebook ad account. So, do we need to submit our app for review?
Thanks in advance.
I'm working on a notification web-app that has a Post-to-Facebook feature. Until the (Graph) API v2.0, it worked great. A user would authenticate with their Facebook account, put their token into our app, and we'd use that to make posts to their wall/page for them when a new notification was sent.
We have applied for the permissions we need to use on Facebook's new API (publish_pages, publish_actions, manage_pages). We received a notice that our application was rejected, so we re-worded the same application for permissions to try to clarify what we use the permissions for, resubmitted it, but have been rejected again.
An app that does almost exactly the same thing we hope to do was granted these permissions (we know, because we both work with- and compete with- that app). Until we found out that that app can still publish posts to Facebook, we believed that all requests to repost/automatically post on users' behalfs were being denied because of a Facebook policy change.
We can't figure out who to contact or where to appeal the denial of these permissions. This probably isn't the right forum (since this isn't specifically a technical question about the API), but I can't see where to take this issue next.
Did you have a look at the Login Review FAQs:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/review/faqs
or otherwise refer to
https://www.facebook.com/groups/fbdevelopers
I'm aware that there are many questions about Facebook access-tokens and the grief they cause, but despite much experimentation and reading many frustratingly vague blog articles (FB and otherwise), I'm still struggling to get a clear answer to my needs. Let me succinctly break down my process so far:
I am creating a site that, server-side, needs to pull the posts/statuses from a single Facebook Page
I am an admin of that Facebook Page
I have created a Facebook App
Using the Facebook Graph API Explorer, I've generated a short-lived key, connected to my app and my account, that grants permission to my account to view the access-tokens for my pages
I've converted my short-lived key to a long-lived key (60 days) ala scenario 4 from this
And here's where I am stuck. My 60 day key works fine for my server to pull the info needed from the page, but as far I can tell, there's no way to programmatically extend that 60 day key. I also do not know of a way to generate a new short-lived key without manually going to the Facebook Graph API Explorer and creating one.
Since it is my server making the requests to the Facebook API and not a user-based system (where I could easily request that a user authorize the Facebook app again), this creates a very clunky system. Since Facebook deprecated offline_access, is there really no permanent way to have my server pull info from my own page? Will I really have to create a new key by hand and manually update my server with it every 60 days?
Or is there something I'm missing?
Update:
The step-by-step guide that was previously found here has been migrated down into its own answer.
These are the steps that were previously in the question - they have been migrated to this answer.
Having found that it is possible to generate a Facebook Page Access Token that does not expire (with help from #Igy), here is a clear, step-by-step quide for all those looking to the same:
Make sure you are the admin of the FB page you wish to pull info from
Create a FB App (should be with the same user account that is the page admin)
Head over to the Facebook Graph API Explorer
On the top right, select the FB App you created from the "Application" drop down list
Click "Get Access Token"
Make sure you add the manage_pages permission
Convert this short-lived access token into a long-lived one by making this Graph API call:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=<your FB App ID >&client_secret=<your FB App secret>&grant_type=fb_exchange_token&fb_exchange_token=<your short-lived access token>
Grab the new long-lived access token returned back
Make a Graph API call to see your accounts using the new long-lived access token: https://graph.facebook.com/me/accounts?access_token=<your long-lived access token>
Grab the access_token for the page you'll be pulling info from
Lint the token to see that it is set to Expires: Never!
That should do it. You should now have a Facebook Page Access Token that doesn't expire, unless:
You change your Facebook account password
You lose admin access for the target page
You delete or de-authorize your Facebook App
Any of these will cause the access token to become invalid.
If you are getting (#100) Tried accessing nonexisting field (accounts) on node type (Page), go to the Access Token Debugger, copy the value of User ID, and use it to replace the "me" part of the URL in step 9.
This is covered in the Offline Access deprecation document
Use the 60-day token for the page admin to retrieve a Page Access Token (via /PAGE_ID?fields=access_token or /me/accounts) - the Page access token will not have an expiry time
An approach that works in 2019
I was recently trying to achieve something similar (to the use case described in this thread), but I wanted to make sure to respect Facebook's current policies, so I did a little research and here I'm sharing what I found.
My use case
So, as I said already, my use case is very similar to the one described here; that is:
I'm doing some work for a school district.
They are using a software tool to manage pretty much everything that relates to school transportation.
That tool allows them to send email notifications (to subscribers) when they publish bus delay alerts and school closure alerts.
A lot of people in the community follow the organization on their Facebook page, and that's the only place they look for those alerts.
So an employee of the organization has to manually publish each notification on the Facebook page (in addition to creating it in the transportation software). Moreover, those notifications eventually expire (or are simply deleted before they expire), so the employee has to go back later on to delete them manually as well.
It's a waist of time, so what we are trying to do here is to develop as simple system that periodically polls the software tool's database for new (and expired) notifications and update them (i.e. add and remove) on the Facebook page.
This is, in my view, a legitimate use case, but I wasn't sure how to implement it in a way that's in line with Facebook's policies.
The accepted answer
I followed the steps of the accepted answer and it worked, except that things appear to have changed: now, even though the generated page token does not expire, access to data does expire after around 60 days. You will see that as well if you follow the procedure and inspect the page token in the FB Token Debugger Tool.
Besides, the fact that the generated page tokens are tied to the user account is also unfortunate, because if the user updates his/her password, then the page token also gets invalidated.
How to do it in 2019
After several hours of research, I stumbled upon the following Facebook documentation article: Business Login for Direct Businesses.
It turns out that it is now possible, following the steps described in the above article, to generate a page token that is not associated to any particular Facebook user account and which will not expire (unless the FB App gets deleted or the underlying application token gets deleted, you know...)
So here are the steps and the most important parts:
You need a Business Manager account.
Verification will be required and a digital contract will have to be signed.
You need to add the target Facebook page to that account.
You need to create a Facebook App, and transfer that app to the same Business Manager account as well.
The app will have to go through Facebook's review process, because the following permissions will be needed: manage_pages and publish_pages.
Important note For the posts made using the generate page token to be visible to users other than the application administrators, that app will need to have been published and approved.
You may still experiment with the concept without submitting for review, but the posts won't be publicly visible.
In the Business Manager account (only after your app and page have been added to the account), you need to create what's called a System User, and give that user admin role (or permissions) to the target Facebook page.
A system user is owned by the Business Manager account, and isn't tied to a specific user. My current understanding is that one major use case for a system user is programmatic access to Facebook's Graph API (just what we need).
Then, for that system user, you need to generate a access token (which will be never-expiring). You will be prompted to select for which app. You will then select your target app.
You will then need to use the generated app token to generate a page token, which will also be never-expiring. The procedure is described in this article as:
GET /<PAGE_ID>?fields=access_token&access_token=<SYSTEM_USER_ACCESS_TOKEN>
That's it.
That token will never expire, and it won't be tied to a particular Facebook user, so it's exactly what we need!
The last part is to make sure that your Facebook app gets approved by Facebook. It's in fact the most important part, because the whole procedure is worthless if people don't see our posts.
I wanted to know for sure that I could rely on the above procedure to build something for my client without Facebook rejecting it in the end, so, beforehand (i.e. before starting to work on my client's project), I went through the whole process of creating a page, an app, a Business Manager account, etc. I verified my business. I submitted my app for review. In my request, I was very specific about my use case and emphasized that the app was for "self-use" (i.e. that the organization is developing an app for itself, not for other Facebook users). I got approved without less than 24 hours.
A few other notes about the app review process:
I had to select a platform for the app, so I selected website.
I had to indicate why the app needed the two permissions and how it was going to use them.
I had to indicate why the reviewer would not be able to sign into my app and try it (i.e. because the app will be used by a worker process).
For the mandatory screencasts, I simply presented manual operations in the terminal using the curl utility (to generate the page token and make posts to the Facebook page). I also showed how I was using Business Manager to link the system user to the page and generate a token, and so on.
Again, I was very specific about my use case, and I think that that helped.
I hope this information will be useful to people with similar use cases.
Many thanks to #redhotvengeance for step-by-step guide.
After some time, now there is clearly described in Facebook documentation:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/expiration-and-extension
Extending Page Access Tokens
Apps can retrieve a page access token from Page admin users when they
authenticate with the manage_pages permission. If the user access
token used to retrieve this page access token is short-lived, the page
access token will also be short-lived.
To get a longer-lived page access token, exchange the User access
token for a long-lived one, as above, and then request the Page access
token. The resulting page access token will not have any expiry time.
You can also copy and past from the app dashboard on facebook.
The steps:
Go to https://developers.facebook.com
Select your app in the top right corner of the page
(pic of what it looks like)
Click on Messenger from the options on the left (it will go to setting automatically) (pic of what it looks like)
Go to the "Token Generation" section in the page. Select what page you want to generate the token for. (pic of what that section looks like)
The copy and past your page token where ever you need it.
Keep in mind that while in theory your token won't expire, that it is directly tied to what ever facebook account your logged into. So say you change your password or you remove the permissions from between your account and your app then your token won't be valid any more.
I'm using django-facebook on an app. Users can publish open graph actions from the application, but I'm running into problems with expired oauth tokens since moving away from offline_access.
I'd like to check token validity (and update it, if necessary) without a server-side, blocking, call.
My first thought was to pull the current access_token from the javascript library and then save to the database whenever they hit the page - but that overwrites the longer-term one with a 2 hr one; not very good.
Something more like what Facebook describes in their blog post could work, but, again, I'd like it to be non-blocking. Also, if the user is currently logged into the app, I'd like to not present them with a dialog just to renew the token.
django-facebook docs note that version 4 supports "Automatic reauthentication for expired tokens," but I don't seem to be triggering that in the app.
Either specifics on how to get this to happen automatically with django-facebook would be great, or, alternatively, some advice and guidance on standard/best practices here would be very helpful. Thanks!
(Apologies for any naïveté here, I'm an occasional FB developer and frequently find that I'm lagging behind changes to the Facebook API.)
I'm building a Facebbook application that uses the Facebook oauth login. I see some existing sites that have a single-page experience that combines application authorization with asking for permissions. But when I build my application, I'm seeing a two-page authorization dialog: application authorization and basic permissions come on the first screen, the second screen asks for additional permissions.
I'd like to get to a single-screen dialog, similar to the one shown on this page:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
but that's not what I'm seeing, even though I use the URL from that page, and even though I use the same Oauth redirect URL that I see in another app that shows the dialog as I want it.
Anyone have any ideas on how to have the older app authentication dialog?
Short answer: that's the way it works now. Facebook changed things. Go figure.
Facebook has changed the way the auth dialog works. It seems like they are trying to discourage use of publish_stream and other permissions and make it easier for users to grant the open graph publish_actions permission.
From the recent blog post:
Added functionality to the publish_actions permission
When we turn on the new auth dialog, we will also add some of the most frequently requested permissions to publish_actions to make the permission more robust and improve conversion. publish_actions now includes the ability to post status updates on the authenticated user’s own timeline, tag photos, publish photos and videos. Other actions such as posting to a friend's timeline still require the use of publish_stream.
Adding these common permissions to publish_actions eliminates the need for extended permissions and the second screen of the auth dialog for the majority of timeline apps built with the Open Graph. This makes the auth process clearer to new users and should improve conversion rates. Additionally, approved Open Graph actions are no longer required for the publish_actions permission. Apps should only ask for the stream_publish permission if they absolutely need functionality not present in publish_actions.
See this blog post for full details and references: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/03/02/enhanced-auth-dialog-and-updates-to-permissions/
Subscribing to the Facebook devleoper blog and monitoring the platform roadmap at https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/ are good ways to see these changes coming.