Facebook integration... Where to start? - django

I recently put a django project of mine into its beta stages and would really like to integrate more with social media, particularly facebook.
Now there are so many facebook integrations out there... I don't know where to start but, I'll tell you what I am after.
My sites publishes content with photos and also user related data (which site doesn't)
on each individual page I already have a facebook like button that basically has the absolute url of that page
so for instance:
http://my-site.com/url-1
http://my-site.com/url-345345
http://my-site.com/url-456456456
When a user likes this particular url I would like them to become a Fan on my facebook site/page as well.
I also added the FB opengraph tool which is a bit more informative once a user likes it. But it still does not publish any statistics to my page.
Can someone give me a bit of an understanding on what the best option is for this type of integration?

As a security option for the user, Facebook has never allowed third party access to "become a fan."
If you want to record locally when someone presses the "Like" button, you'll have to implement it locally (copy the presentation, and query Facebook yourself), so you can intercept the event. I've done that; it's not too hard.
I suggest you review the Connect Terms of Service to see what it is you're allowed to do: http://developers.facebook.com/policy/

Related

Starting using Instagram oEmbed feature

What is the correct way to start using Instagram oEmbed feature? Documentation (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram/oembed/) claims that I have to pass App Review to start using the feature. And application form says Please provide a URL where we can test Oembed Read. Which I don't have because I have no access to the feature.
What I have tried with no success:
I requested instagram_oembed resource with:
app token of application in live mode
app token of application in
development mode
passed URL to a post by official Instagram account
(e.g. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQG4gZxMzzO/)
passed URL to a post
of a user who is Admin of the app
In all cases I receive (#10) To use 'Oembed Read', your use of this endpoint must be reviewed and approved by Facebook. To submit this 'Oembed Read' feature for review please read our documentation on reviewable features: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review.
Example of the request I do https://graph.facebook.com/v11.0/instagram_oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fp%2FCQG4gZxMzzO%2F&access_token=appAccessToken
We're also suffering from this issue, but so far, we thought we already figured out how to do that.
Big picture
Facebook had not sorted this thing out correctly. Or at least, we don't know why they put such a restriction to this API.
The official document is not correct. (or at least not accurate for now, for some part)
Which part was not correct?
The access token part is not right. Or at least, it's the most confusion part.
How can we resolve this?
Use the Graph API Explorer
Adjust your token(App token, Client access token, user token) with the official URLs(see below) to see if you can get the result
most of us should be able to get the result with user access token, which means you have to access this API after login!
Integrate into your app for review
The review page is also confusing:
Please provide a URL where we can test Oembed Read. Include the URL of a page, post or video from our official Facebook or Instagram pages, or the pages themselves., it means you can only use links like https://www.facebook.com/instagram or https://www.facebook.com/facebook
With that in mind, so far, the only way to get approved is integrate your oembed usage into your normal UI with facebook user access token ready
Question to the big picture
So, we have to ask user to login with our facebook app, then we can provide this oembed read API returned embed HTML? I'm afraid that's what we have now.
big companies might be able to apply for App Token, I guess in that scenario, facebook login is not necessary
for small companies, indie developers, hmmm, I don't know any better solutions so far.
I have run into this too. I do not have an answer at this time, I just want to report on the frustrations of their 'app review' process. Which makes it feel like you are unlikely to get it to work any time soon.
We have a custom embed code for our weblog authors to use (a shortcode kind of thing) which does the oEmbed call. We just take the HTML from the resulting JSON, and insert it into the weblog article page, and that is it. It stopped working, presenting this same error - in live mode, and in development mode.
The kicker is, I then tried submitting it for app review. Filled out everything I could to the best of my knowledge. Provided them a test account and post on our weblog to show the shortcode editing and expected placement. We got rejected. Why? Your embedding resulted in an error, we can't see it in action to approve you.
Yes. The error I am getting is that I need my 'app' to be reviewed and approved.
This is an infuriating process. This is the only Facebook / Instagram API feature we use at this point. No user data. No attempt to make an Instagram clone app or anything like that. Just an embed.
And they are making this simple use case as impossible to use as they can. And the documentation also feels like an infinite loop. They say users of the old Instagram embed call have until September 7 2021 to get approved. But the call does not work at all because we are not approved. So we cannot get approved.
Same loop here. I've managed to report it to Facebook team and get answer "Just submit your Instagram post URL"! I can't believe it, its can't be so simple. I've confirmed it few times with Facebook team person and.... get rejected!
Also, second form in App Review process will LOWERCASE all of your links and I've spent few days just to explain it to reviewers and support person. Still rejected after submitting proper url. This is insane.
My another attempt was about to build a test page where I can auth via Facebook account, parse connected Instagram accounts and GET embed endpoint with user access key in hope that reviewer HAS access to oembed feature - REJECTED. I can't even find what permission I need to add to auth URL to obtain oembed thing.
Will update my answer with new information later.
UPDATE: After reporting about the issue with lowercase URL in submission form they just APPROVED my app without APP REVIEW. Well... Facebook style...
I had exactly the same problem recently. Updated the packages with compose, changed the API version from 10 to 11... without any change.
The error was also occurring in development mode, it didn't make sense that Facebook was asking to approve in dev mode.
For me, the problem came from the management of scopes in my application, depending on the version of the Facebook API used.
My advice: check the scopes defined with API version in your code first.
I had the same issue and the solution is very simple. The only thing you need to do is copy paste an instagram url in the input field saying: Please provide a URL where we can test Oembed Read.
I did the this link: https://www.instagram.com/p/G/
Which is actually the first instagram post :) Got approved. Hope this helps everybody!

How to set privacy policy url for a fb app when working on localhost?

I am working on a local application that needs to retrieve data from user's Facebook profile. As long as I can see, by default I can only get name, picture and age range, but I need many others information like education, location, likes and so on. I tried to submit approval for these items, but Facebook won't set my submission because I don't have a Privacy Policy URL added. I don't know what Privacy Policy URL to add because I'm working on localhost.
Please help me figure it out and excuse me if my question is wrong, it's the first time when I work with fb api. Also, if there is another way to retrieve this items, I would be more than happy to hear about it.
Have a look at
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/login#do-you-need-review
It's saying that
in order to help you craft your Facebook Login experience, your app's developers will be able to see, and grant, any permission without requiring review by Facebook.
and
Also, if you're the developer of an app and are the only person using it, then your app doesn't need to go through review. Since you're the developer, all app capabilities should be available. You will still need to take your app out of developer mode, but you should be able to do that without going through review.
So, to be able to develop your app and request extended permissions, you don't need to pass your app to review, as long as you test with an app admin/developer/tester.

A simple and up-to-date way to implement Facebook login in a Django app

This issue is very common in stackoverflow, and there's a lot of different questions and answers about it, yet I couldn't find exactly what I need.
First, I'd like to define exactly what I need: the option to let users log in to my app using their Facebook credentials. The app will save a matching classic Django user. I will only need to use the user's profile picture and to make sure that each time the same Facebook user will be related to the matching Django user.
Unfortunately, I find it really frustrating to implement for the following reasons:
By now, after reading a lot, I couldn't find out what is the best package for this task.
Some people recommend django-social-auth and praise its functionality and documentation. Personally, I don't understand why, since it's not specifically for Facebook and there are no explanations about the client side, i.e the Facebook login button and how the whole flow works.
When you go to Facebook developers, you suddenly find yourself reading about some magical javascript sdk, and about a promise that that's all you need. Then you get frustrated again and can't understand how a client side related sdk can sign up users to your app.
I know developers somehow implement Facebook auth packages in their apps, but I just can't figure out how to do it.
If anyone could tell me: at this time point, what is the best way to add Facebook authentication to my Django app? I would also ask for detailed documentation / tutorial that explains how to log in a Facebook user, from settings and configuration level through signup to Django app and to client side code.
There are multiple ways to approach the problem, what is the "best" way is really subjective.
Subjectively speaking, you could opt for django-allauth. Here are a few pointers to help you get started:
If you want to keep the signup simple, set SOCIALACCOUNT_AUTO_SIGNUP to True in order to achieve a "no questions asked" login. Users simply approve the FB dialog and they end up logged in in your site right away.
Adding a login button to your template is merely a matter of:
Sign In
The app offers support for the JS SDK login (pro: users are accustomed to the typical FB popup that appears), or you can use your own OAuth flow. Whatever you please.
The fastest way understand FB's Oauth 2.0 flow is to play with FB's Javascript SDK. Once you get the hang of it, the FB's PHP library is similar. Also, other OAuth sites like Google, Twitter or Dropbox have almost identical implementation.
In baby steps:
Learn how to install FB Javascript SDK onto a simple page
Use FB.login to determine login status and obtain the login url.
Lastly, use FB.Event.Subscribe and subscribe to auth.statusChange to detect the login/logout changes.
Also, good to check out https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/ on the upcoming features or features being removed.
django-social-auth is not just for Facebook, but that doesn't mean you should use all the backends available.
Project documentation is at http://django-social-auth.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html and Facebook backend details at http://django-social-auth.readthedocs.org/en/latest/backends/facebook.html.

Django and Post to Facebook (no authentication)

OK, I need some help understanding the process behind Facebook's website integration process and how I can integrate it into my web app....
In its most basic form, my site stores and displays users' comments about products (there's more to it than that, but that's all that's relevant for this question). What I'd like to do is allow them to post that comment, together with the name of the product (and my site), to their Facebook wall by clicking a button.
I do not need the users to log in to my site at all, either with Facebook or any other authentication system and the Post to Facebook part is optional.
Obviously if they decide they do want to post their comment to Facebook, then they'll need to login, but I'd rather temporarily take them away from the page to login, post and then be brought back to my site.
What I need to know is how much of Facebook's APIs, Open Graph and Auth systems do I actually need to integrate?
I had hoped that I might be able to generate a simple link to Facebook with their comment embedded as a POST element...?
I'd be really grateful if someone could point me in the right direction!!
(P.S. I need a similar solution for Twitter, but I think that's easier!?!)
The Feed Dialog doesn’t allow including of a pre-set message any more, so you’d have to make that post via the Graph API if you want to pre-fill the message (and even then, you should only do so, if you’ve given the user the possibility to edit the pre-filled message first).
See here for how to make a post on a user’s behalf via Graph API, https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/#posts
You can do that all client-side, if you embed the JavaScript SDK into your page.
You need to set up an app on FB, then have the user connect to it (using FB.login), ask for the necessary permission (publish_stream) while doing so, and after successful login use FB.api to make the Graph API call.

How can I allow my users, who create pages on my website, to communicate back to those people who click the Facebook "Like" button on their pages?

OK, apologies for the verbose title. Let me give the background in a bit more detail.
My website allows my registered users to create new pages, each of which has its own unique URL. Each page has a Facebook "Like" button on it. I've already implemented Facebook Open Graph API meta tags so that the pages are proper open graph objects, and when some other visiting Facebook user "likes" the registered user's page, a post appears on that Facebook user's wall saying they have liked the page. The Facebook Like widget also displays the number of "likes" that page has received as normal. So far, so good.
What I want to do is allow my registered users to be able to communicate back to the Facebook users who have liked their page. The community of "likers" for a page is a potentially valuable social media resource to the registered user, if only they could communicate back.
I am aware of the "admin page" link you get beside the Like button, which can be used to post to these people, but that is not an option for my registered users as they have no privileges in relation to the Like button.
What I want to do, if possible, is setup a form to capture the registered user's message back to the Facebook users, and then my website sends the message on their behalf, without having to ask for any extra privileges from the Facebook users.
The following Facebook documentation pages seem to say this is possible, but having followed the Open Graph API documentation, I can't get it to work as described - http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/465/ and http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/ ("Publishing" subsection). I can get the access token correctly in the first request, and plug that into the second request to do the post, but that doesn't seem to do anything and doesn't return any error.
Since it doesn't work for me, I'm wondering if this is possible as described, or do I need to get some sort of extra permission to do this? I've seen reference to offline_access permission but as I'm new to this stuff I am not sure how it would fit in. If I have to get the Facebook users to grant permissions, this is not going to work as envisaged.
Any thoughts would be most helpful.
The short answer: No, You will never been able to post on someones wall as another user.
The long answer:
You could try to ask for offline access but then you are asking the user to hand over all their facebook data and give you access todo whatever you like their accound, so that is not likely to happend.
The next problem is that they have to be friends to be able to post on each others walls.
Thats why Pages was implemented, so that organisations could announce/talk with the people interested.
However if you have created the like button correctly and give the pages correct meta data, you are able to post to user who have liked it.
Scroll down to Publishing:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/
Just add a form for your user and let your system publish to the correct page, you probably will need a offline token from your own account or similar to use on the server.
Another more complex way could be to generate a facebook page for each page you have on your server.
When the user creates a page on your system a page is created on facebook but as your app as admin.
And when another user likes the page they like the facebook page, hence you have the possibility to post in that page and speak to the user who liked it. (whooa thats a mouthfull).