1

Hoping someone has some knowledge on this one. I have a system which allows users to post to facebook or to send a link via email using an ESP called dotMailer. When creating the wall post / email campaign however, both Facebook and dotMailer 'test' the URL embedded in the content to see if it's valid.

I am storing a viewed_on date for the URLs, and as such I want to be able to ignore the HTTP requests by Facebook and dotMailer rather than storing the viewed_on date that they trigger by hitting the URL.

In terms of what I've tried / won't work:

  • IP Filtering - cannot rely on IP being same each time
  • Time-based delay - depends on how quickly dotMailer/Facebook processes the requests, so cannot rely on this

Thanks!

toomanyredirects
  • 1,972
  • 15
  • 23
  • 1
    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8626812/how-to-recognize-facebook-user-agent If dotMailer uses something similar – please research yourself. – CBroe Mar 13 '13 at 14:47

1 Answers1

1

I'm a dev with dotMailer - for us, you can rely on the request coming from one of two different places: 94.143.104.0/21, 80.249.97.113, or 80.249.97.114. With Facebook, you can simply check the UserAgent. We use an IE useragent, because a surprising amount of sites behave differently when presented with a non-standard useragent and thus make link checking less reliable.

We've got a great forum, so stop on by if you have any more questions! https://support.dotmailer.com/forums

pattermeister
  • 3,132
  • 2
  • 25
  • 27