How to get Page Access Token by code?

Question

I need to generate a Page Access Token for a webpage that I have, this token will be used by the webpage to post to its Facebook Page feed.

This is what I do :

Go to Graph API Explorer
Choose my app from the dropdown
Click Get Access Token
Choose correct permissions(manage_pages/user_events)

To get the Page Access Token I have to run me/accounts in the Graph API Explorer. This will show all the pages I got with a new Page Access Token (short lived(about 60 min)) to each one.

This Page Access Token will work just fine to use in my C# code to post to the feed.

Problem

When another user uses my webpage to post a post I need to generate a new Page Access Token(in code) and then use it to post the userpost to the site´s facebook feed. The problem is that I could clearly not be there to grant the post so how do I handle this?

I could obviously not run the me/accounts(in code) command to get the Page Access Token from here.

I have looked at extended Access Token but this will last 60 days and then it will be the same problem as above.

I suspect that when running /me/accounts/ it will go to facebook and fetch the data based on "me". So if another user is posting to the website on another computer it will ask for that persons accounts instead of my(admin) accounts and it will not find any access token there. Besides, it will demand the other user to logon to facebook and that is not what I want. I only want my webpage to post to the webpage´s facebook feed without involving the user that are triggering the action(post a post in my forum) on my webpage. — Banshee, Aug 24 '14 at 10:18
alright, now i understand. so you want to store the page token and use it for every other user? — andyrandy, Aug 24 '14 at 10:24

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 24 '14 at 10:30

14

What you need is an Extended Page Token:

generate User Access Token with manage_pages and publish_actions
generate Extended User Token (valid for 60 days): https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?grant_type=fb_exchange_token&client_id=[app-id]&client_secret=[app-secret]&fb_exchange_token=[short-lived-token]
call /me/accounts with the Extended User Token to get Extended Page Tokens

Extended Page Tokens are valid forever, so you don´t need to generate a new one all the time.

Source (including information about all the Tokens): http://www.devils-heaven.com/facebook-access-tokens/

answered Aug 24 '14 at 10:30

andyrandy

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How do I run the extended user token with the /me/accounts command? – Banshee Aug 24 '14 at 10:52
2

/me/accounts?access_token=xxxx – andyrandy Aug 24 '14 at 10:58
I saw somthing about a new version of Facebook API? Will this still work in the new version? – Banshee Aug 24 '14 at 11:19
1

yes, that part did not change: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog – andyrandy Aug 24 '14 at 11:34
Excellent! It took me 3 days to find anyone who answered this. Thank you. – MagicLAMP Nov 19 '14 at 09:03
Great solution. I'm still very surprised about the lack of documentation of Facebook. It is never possible to find the required information. – Federico Schiocchet Mar 04 '21 at 18:12

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '16 at 15:54

On https://developers.facebook.com/docs/pages/access-tokens

Getting Page Access Tokens

GET /{page-id}?fields=access_token&access_token={user_access_token}

The response will look like this:

{
  "access_token": "{your-page-access-token}",
  "id": "{page-id}"
}

How to get Page Access Token by code?

2 Answers2

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