Reading the API docs (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/page/) I assumed that in order to read a public pages status updates, I would require "any valid access_token or user access_token" (quoting the docs here).
However, if I try to get the status updates for the public page, using my app access token, I receive the following response: "A user access token is required to request this resource"
GET 20531316728/statuses?access_token=myappaccesstoken
So, my question is if the docs are just plain wrong, I'm doing something wrong or whatever?
There is a clarification that needs to occur by Facebook [1]. The docs are either outdated or Facebook has changed their mind on handling these updates which is interesting seeing that
GET /PAGE_ID/feed?access_token=myappaccesstoken
Works (and holds all the statuses). I was told by someone in IRC #facebook that maybe the statuses call is more expensive (Not too bought on this idea).
My current stance is that either
any valid access_token or user access_token was supposed to imply those excluding app tokens
Facebook realizes that one can bypass the OAuth Flow by using an app token on pages when Facebook desired some form of authentication.
In the end, these are all assumptions.
I haven't been able to get a clear answer out of any Facebook employee as to whether this is indeed a bug or an intentional removal of this feature.
[1] - http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/480742545315442
Related
I am using PHP for accessing Facebook friends location. I want to access location of all friends. I read that it requires "access tokens" to get client's public information from here
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens#apptokens
and here
https://www.sammyk.me/access-token-handling-best-practices-in-facebook-php-sdk-v4
Is that token will be provided by Facebook at that instant of time or my app needs to wait till friend's approval.
I saw this post on stack overflow: How to get user access token?
But i still i can't figure out what if friend is offline. How that token will be passed to my application?
Or is it like that "Tokens are generated by Facebook at time when my application made the request but i can only access the user information later using the same token if he has given permission (when he gets logged in)".?
I am unable to find any explanation regarding this.
Thanks.
You can´t get the location of friends at all. Friend permissions have been removed for privacy reasons, you can only get data of users who authorized your App too. Check out the changelog for more information: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog
That being said, there are different Access Tokens. You can get an App Token without authorization, but you need to implement an authorization process for User or Page Tokens.
More information:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens
http://www.devils-heaven.com/facebook-access-tokens/
I have an application, that runs on server. On that server is background task, that will post status update on few social networks (Facebook, Twitter, G+). It must be completely server-side.
In Twitter API I'm able to use OAuth header to authorize API request. OAuth HTTP header uses consumer key, consumer secret, access token and access token secret to create the header. With this I'm able to post/update/delete tweets with no user interaction.
How can I do this for Facebook? I found a solution to obtain a long-lived access_token (2 months), but we don't want to regenerate access_token every 60 days. We want to use it for manage our Facebook page - post status updates, but completely server-side.
Am I able to do this for Facebook? Thanks for answers.
PS: I searched stackoverflow hundred-times but with no solution for my problem.
Thanks.
It is not possible for User Access Tokens (they can only be extended to 60 days and need to be refreshed by the user after that), but for posting to a Page you should use a Page Token anyway. An Extended Page Token is valid forever.
Here are some Links to help you get that Extended Page Token:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/
http://www.devils-heaven.com/facebook-access-tokens/
http://www.devils-heaven.com/extended-page-access-tokens-curl/
A Page Token will post "as Page" btw, but that´s probably what you want. And auto-posting on user profiles is not really allowed anyway, every message has to be 100% user generated and every posting should get authorized by the user.
Pay attention to Access Tokens Expiration & Extentions.
The Page Access Token could be a good solution to only server side calls for testing and data analysis purposes.
Take your User Access Token from Graph API Tool
Extend your User Access Token
Call https://graph.facebook.com/v2.11/me/accounts with your user access token extended
*all calls are GET and this procedure does not use APP Access Token.
As a proof of concept for a simple background application, I used the Graph API Explorer to create an access token for my app to post something to the wall of a page I maintain. It worked fine. Naturally, however, the token expires.
So now I'm trying to have the background application automatically request a new page access token each time it runs. And I'm having a lot of trouble finding a concrete definition of how to do that. There's no shortage of information regarding Facebook and Access Tokens, but nothing seems to demonstrate how to have a background application post to a page. (Not post to a user's wall, not display a login dialog to a user since it's a background application, etc.)
I can fetch an access token in code easily enough by reading the response from a web request to this URL:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={MY_APP_ID}&client_secret={MY_APP_SECRET}
Of course, that "access token" doesn't work when trying to post to the page's wall. It says that the user hasn't authorized the application to perform this action. The action I'm performing is pretty simple:
var client = new FacebookClient(GetFacebookAccessToken());
dynamic parameters = new ExpandoObject();
parameters.message = "this is a test";
dynamic result = client.Post("{MY_PAGE_ID}/feed", parameters);
I've read in some places that I'll need to make a second request, using the first access token, to get the page access token. But I can't seem to find examples of how to do that.
Can someone shed some light on this for me?
I have a Facebook page.
I have a Facebook app which serves no other purpose than to provide a means for a local background application to access said page.
I just need that application to be able to authenticate so it can post something to the page.
(And if there's a step I need to perform in the Facebook UI to permanently give the application permission to do this, I think I've performed that step but it would be good to double check somehow.)
Edit: It's been described to me that I need to obtain a long-lived user access token and, using that, obtain a page access token. The theory is that said page access token won't expire. However, what's not clear to me is how one accomplishes this.
I've read the page describing the deprecation of offline_access, as well as the page describing server-side access. However, I'm clearly misunderstanding something. In the former, it references the latter for obtaining the proper token. The latter, however, includes steps for presenting a login to the user, having them accept permissions, and using the response from that login.
Being a background process that runs unattended, presenting any sort of question to a user (which would be me) isn't really an option. I've also been told that I can't do a one-time request from my browser to get an access token because that is, by definition, client-side interaction and not part of the necessary server-side flow. (It seems odd to me that the service would care if a RESTful request comes from a web browser vs. from an application, but I'm not familiar enough with OAuth or the Facebook API to really make that call.)
So, if I can perform some manual steps to get a permanent access token for the app to post to the Facebook page, what are those steps? Conversely, if I can perform some automated steps in the application to acquire access each time it runs, what are those steps?
(Making a few more API calls from the application adds a second or two of running time to an otherwise once-a-day process, so it makes no difference to me which approach to take.)
At first I just went into the Facebook Application settings and re-enabled the deprecated "offline access" permission. Said application settings can be found at a URL like this:
https://developers.facebook.com/apps/{APPLICATION_ID}/advanced
However, since everything keeps referring to that setting as being "deprecated" then I didn't want to use that as a long-term solution. It may get removed entirely, it may be unsafe in certain circumstances, etc. Better to use recommended functionality.
So here's what I was able to piece together from a scavenger hunt through updated documentation, outdated documentation, a sea of outdated internet posts, and PHP code which mostly made assumptions about functionality that aren't true in all cases...
Visit the Graph API Explorer and select your Facebook Application from the drop-down menu. Click "Get Access Token" and select the permissions you want. (For mine I went to the "Extended Permissions" tab and selected "Managed Pages" and "Publish Stream.") You will be prompted (in my browser it was in a new tab) with a familiar screen where the Facebook Application is asking you, the user, to grant it the permissions you just selected. (You've seen this before if you've ever agreed to use a Facebook Application before.)
The value it produces in the Graph API Explorer (a long string of random-ish characters) is your "Short Lived User Access Token."
As described here in "Scenario 4: Client-side OAuth and Extending Access_Token Expiration Time through New Endpoint" access this URL in your web browser:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id={APPLICATION_ID}
&client_secret={APPLICATION_SECRET}
&grant_type=fb_exchange_token
&fb_exchange_token={SHORT_LIVED_USER_ACCESS_TOKEN}
(You can obtain the {APPLICATION_SECRET} value on the basic settings page for your Facebook Application: https://developers.facebook.com/apps/{APPLICATION_ID}/summary)
This will return another Access Token as such:
access_token={LONG_LIVED_USER_ACCESS_TOKEN}&expires=5184000
This access_token value (another long string of random-ish characters) is your "Long Lived User Access Token." The expires value is in seconds, which translates into 60 days.
Now we hop over to the Page API reference and take a look at the section on Page Access Tokens. This, along with the basic structure of Graph API requests exemplified here (scroll down to the part where it shows a bulleted list of sample links which include access_token specifiers, which you'll need to specify here because you're requesting non-public information) leads you to request this in your browser:
https://graph.facebook.com/{FACEBOOK_USER_ID}/accounts?
access_token={LONG_LIVED_USER_ACCESS_TOKEN}
This will return a JavaScript object containing lots of useful information about the Facebook Pages and Facebook Applications your user account controls. In my case the Page and the Application had the same name, but it's easy to tell them apart from the category values or, if all else fails, the id values. Find the Page that the background application running on your machine will need to access and copy its access_token (the third and final long string of random-ish characters). The whole node looks something like this:
{
"name": "Some Facebook Application Name",
"access_token": "{LONG_LIVED_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN}",
"category": "Musician/band",
"id": "{APPLICATION_ID}",
"perms": [
"ADMINISTER",
"EDIT_PROFILE",
"CREATE_CONTENT",
"MODERATE_CONTENT",
"CREATE_ADS",
"BASIC_ADMIN"
]
}
This is your "Long Lived Page Access Token." This is the value you use to initialize the FacebookClient object in the code. Then, posting a simple status update is as easy as:
var client = new FacebookClient("{LONG_LIVED_PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN}");
dynamic parameters = new ExpandoObject();
parameters.message = "This is a my status update.";
dynamic result = client.Post("{FACEBOOK_PAGE_ID}/feed", parameters);
Supposedly this "Long Lived Page Access Token" does not expire after 60 days like the "Long Lived User Access Token" does. I'll find out in 59 days, I guess.
NB: The curly braces in my examples are part of the placeholder for actual values. Do not use the curly braces in the actual requests. So something like this:
https://developers.facebook.com/apps/{APPLICATION_ID}/advanced
becomes something like this, for example:
https://developers.facebook.com/apps/123456/advanced
where 123456 is the actual Facebook Application ID.
Being a background process that runs unattended, presenting any sort of question to a user (which would be me) isn't really an option.
As I already said, you only have to do it once.
You get your non-expiring page access token, copy&paste that into your app – and from then on your app can do server-side whatever it wants to do happily everafter.
I've also been told that I can't do a one-time request from my browser to get an access token because that is, by definition, client-side interaction and not part of the necessary server-side flow.
The server-side auth flow for getting a user access token also needs to take part partly in the browser.
It does not matter, if you get a short-lived token via the client-side auth flow and extend it afterwards, or if you get a long-lived one using the server-side auth flow.
(It seems odd to me that the service would care if a RESTful request comes from a web browser vs. from an application […])
Facebook does not want users to give their login credentials to any third party. Therefor, the process of getting a user access token always has to take part in the browser, with the user login in to Facebook.
So, if I can perform some manual steps to get a permanent access token for the app to post to the Facebook page, what are those steps?
Get a long-lived user access token with manage_pages permission. (Or get a short-lived one, and extend it). And then, use that long-lived token to request a page access token for the target page, in the way that is described in the docs.
I've tried do develop automatic code that would fetch data from ads campaigns under account. My plan is to have server that would query every day to get data from impressions/clicks/costs of ads and save it for later use.
I use https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer to get access_token for getting data (insights) from those campaign pages but when I log out to try offline_access it tells access_token is old, cause of password change or access_token getting outdated.
Isn't the whole point of offline_access to grant acccess when user is not logged in?
And besides that.. what's with most of my calls ending having reply as follows:
"(#294) Managing advertisements requires the extended permission ads_management, and a participating API key"
I've given access_token that has ads_management, but I have no idea what this Participating Api key even means. Do I need to add this to url call or something? Where do I get this Api Key?
Edit: I want to be able to get data from add campaign pages, so I'm not talking about Apps in page
You will want to read up on the deprecation of the offline_access here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/offline-access-deprecation/
But most importantly follow the guide here on how to handle invalid access tokens:
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/500/
You app is to monitor the error messages coming back from the API and handle it gracefully.
I have the same issue and I found this bug can be reason of our problem. It's already accepted and assigned, but still not solved. I hope it's really bug and not a secure hole, that was closed :)
I'm playing around with Facebook Connect, trying to use Facebook as the means or authentication on my site. Currently my workflow looks something like this:
Go to URL
Server checks cookies for AccessToken
If AccessToken exists, automatically fill in user's name/profile picture in comment box, and leave AccessToken in hidden input
send page down to client
on submit, verify access token (which was submitted with the rest of the form) is a valid access token for a real person. If so, add comment to Database
refresh page to display new data
if no access token, replace user's name/profile picture with <fb:login-button>, along with the required <script>s.
send page down to client
When user authorizes page/logs into facebook, refresh page
(go back to top, except this time the access token should exist)
So I have a few questions:
Is this secure? I was thinking of ways i would be able to do without the double authentication with Facebook (checking once on page-generation and checking again on comment-submission), and I could not figure any other way short of maintaining my own session-state with each client. Is that worth doing?
Does the access token expire when i log out of Facebook? I'm thinking it should, but it seems I can continue to use the same access token to grab data (i.e. name, url, etc.) after I manually go to Facebook and log myself out. Is it because I'm only asking for public information, and only more intrusive permissions expire on logout?
Given that each person who wants to do something has to provide a unique token from Facebook, this should have the side effect of blocking CSRF, since every action can be traced to a valid Facebook account. Is that right?
Why don't you just use the Facebook Javascript SDK to detect if they're currently logged into Facebook? This will also make the access token available in Javascript so you can make client-side calls to the API.
You can access the same access token server side via the session cookie set by Facebook also.
I can't answer all of your questions but I can tell you that having the access token in a hidden field on your page is risky from a policy perspective, especially if your page can be read by any third-party code such as Google Analytics or AdSense. Facebook will nail you for this as it is leaking user identifying data to third parties. The Facebook userid is in the access token in plain text. Facebook has automated processes that scan for this stuff and will auto-ban your app if it is leaking userids to third parties.