Which facebook API's?

Question

Is it possible for me to post a message on a given users facebook wall, if they perform a certain action on my website?

Basically, I am looking for a step by step guide to achieve this, as I have not been able to figure out how to do this via the facebook documentation.

Sure - go to developer.facebook.com and all the information regarding the API is there. You need to create an application, get user's permissions and then you can post to their stream. — Tomas McGuinness, Apr 11 '11 at 15:02
in my opinion facebook's documentation is not complete. It was not enough for most of the problems I faced during my early development with FB. Nothing is explained to the point that it seems logically complete, i.e. there still are many broken links. Lack of prerequisites for implementation and redundancy make most of the documentation useless for customization. — Ashwini Dhekane, Apr 18 '11 at 18:05

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 18 '11 at 15:36

Step 1:

Set up a new application at facebook. Enter details like your website address and domain name. Note down the api key, application id, and application secret. You can set up a new facebook application here. Note: To be able to access facebook developers dashboard you need to be a verified developer, i.e. you should either have your mobile number or credit card verified with it.

Step 2:

Set up an authentication method to check if user is logged into facebook and if facebook session exists ask for basic permissions from user. You can do this easily using PHP SDK:

$fb_sdk_path = FACEBOOK_SDK_PATH;
require_once($fb_sdk_path);

//initialize FB object
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
    'appId'  => FB_APP_ID,
    'secret' => FB_APP_SECRET,
    'cookie' => true,
    'domain' => 'example.com'
));

//try to get session. if this fails then it means user is not logged into facebook
$session = $facebook->getSession();

if (!$session) {
    //get facebook login url
    $url = $facebook->getLoginUrl(array(
        'canvas' => 1,
        'fbconnect' => 0
         )
    );

//put login url script to redirect to facebook login page (if you want to do this)
    echo "<script type='text/javascript'>top.location.href = '$url';</script>";
    exit;
} else {
    //try to get user details from session this will trigger the permissions dialog.
    try {
        $uid = $facebook->getUser();
    } catch (FacebookApiException $e) {
    }
}

Step 3:

Use Facebook Javascript FB.ui method to generate a post form.

<div id="fb-root"></div> <!-- don't forget to include this -->
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js"></script><!-- include fb js -->
<script type="text/javascript">
     //initialize facebook
     FB.init({ 
        appId:'YOUR_APP_ID', 
        cookie:true, 
        status:true,
        xfbml:true 
     });

//call this function on click or some other event
function post_to_profile() {
    FB.ui({
    method: 'feed',
    name: 'title of the feed',
    link: 'link on the title',
    caption: 'caption to show below link, probably your domain name',
    description: 'description',
    picture:'picture to show',
    message: 'default message. this can be edited by the user before posting'
    });
}
</script>

This should be enough to get it working.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 17 '11 at 20:41

1

I would recommend using the Javascript API. While you can certainly do it PHP, I find all the redirects required a poor user experience. Here is how you can get started loading the javascript API. It also has an example on how to post to a wall. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/

Posting to someones wall (yours or a friends) via javascript uses the FB.ui call. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/FB.ui/

answered Apr 17 '11 at 20:41

Brent Baisley

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Is it possible to post to multiple friends, or all friends in one shot? – oshirowanen Apr 18 '11 at 17:30
No, Facebook doesn't allow that anymore. Long ago the limited it to 3, now it's limited to 1.\ – Brent Baisley Apr 19 '11 at 00:08
Just a thought, if I can't post to more than 1 person in parallel, form, is it possible to post to more than 1 person in serial form? i.e. via a loop, 1 after the other? Or have they stopped that too somehow? – oshirowanen Apr 19 '11 at 12:50
1

That you can do. Facebook will send you a warning before they shutdown your app if their is a problem. I've implemented 1 click post where the user sees a list of their friends. Each click on a friend brings up the wall post prompt for that friend. – Brent Baisley Apr 20 '11 at 01:11

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 18 '11 at 12:09

Taken directly from http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/

<html>
    <head>
      <title>My Great Website</title>
    </head>
    <body>
      <div id="fb-root"></div>
      <script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js">
      </script>
      <script>
         FB.init({ 
            appId:'YOUR_APP_ID', cookie:true, 
            status:true, xfbml:true 
         });

         FB.ui({ method: 'feed', 
            message: 'Facebook for Websites is super-cool'});
      </script>
     </body>
 </html>

This will open a prompt to post onto the currently logged in user's wall.

I use jQuery to hook code like this into elements on my site. — plasmid87, Apr 18 '11 at 12:37

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 17 '11 at 01:36

The getting started guide to the Graph API should help you. Specifically, you'll be dealing with the post object (that page contains a note about publishing, scroll down to the "Publishing" section). You'll also need the publish_stream permission, which you can learn more about here. And since you're doing this in PHP, the official Facebook PHP SDK will be of interest to you as well.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 18 '11 at 21:48

Here's the general flow

Register an app at developers.facebook.com
Create page w/ this link to this page: https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth? client_id=164837516907837& type=user_agent& scope=email,read_stream,user_videos,friends_videos,user_about_me,offline_access& redirect_uri=http://www.facebook.com/connect/login_success.html
Save the user x's oath token that is returned from step2
Via API call post to user x's wall

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 19 '11 at 09:23

0

To reference: http://thinkdiff.net/facebook/graph-api-iframe-base-facebook-application-development/

answered Apr 19 '11 at 09:23

khanh

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score 0 · Answer 7 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

Various steps involved

1)Register App at facebook developers

2)Get PHP SDK of Facebook

3)Get Offline access from user so that you can post in users wall without his permission(Use accordingly)

4)Save the access token given by facebook for the user

5)Using the access token by php SDK post into the wall

Check this question it may be of some help

Publishing To User's Wall Without Being Online/Logged-in - Facebook Sharing Using Graph API

Which facebook API's?

7 Answers7