Facebook API: user_feed is empty - javascript

So I was very happy when Facebook approved my Chrome Extension app. Basically, it allows you to import your data from facebook into the local_storage in Chrome, then you can easily search your old posts. While it works like a charm for my account, when I switch to another account, login, approve the Facebook request for permissions, my user_feed data is empty. I am at a loss.
I am able to get user info, the image of the user, his/her name, etc. and I am able to retrieve an access token. But, when I make the call to the feed, it comes back empty:
https://graph.facebook.com/me/feed?access_token=EAAcu...&expires_in&limit=50&offset=1&fields=message,likes,story,created_time,link
(I have also tried injecting the ID for "me"). Again, this works great when it's my FB account (also the developer account). So, I don't think it is my code, the only thing that changes is the user...
Perhaps it takes a certain amount of time for the Facebook API to work even after Facebook approves your permissions request??

Use the Access Token Debugger Tool to see if the access token that you are getting back has user_posts permission listed under "Scopes". If it is not present, then you cannot use that access token to fetch the user's feed.
Note that user_posts permission requires approval prior to usage. If you are not approved, it will only work for people who have admin/developer role in your app.

Got it. I didn't see this anywhere in the documentation, but in addition to having your app's permissions approved by facebook, you must also include the scope as a query parameter:
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=${appId}&scope=user_posts&response_type=token&redirect_uri=http://someresponse.com
If anyone sees this in the documentation, please let me know.

Related

How can my website retrieve my Facebook page Live Videos?

If I go to the Graph API Explorer, get a User Access Token, and then go to /<page-id>/live_videos I can return a list of live videos from that page, including the status (VOD aka past, or LIVE) and the embed_html.
This is great but the problem is this User Access Token will expire. I want to be able to get this data as part of my website to show visitors whether we are live or not, and if so give them an option to open the video right there on the site. It shouldn't be something a user has to login in to allow my app to access FB on their behalf.
So I tried using an App Access Token which I got by using the App ID and App Secret of my page's 'Facebook App' as described in the Facebook docs here... but the Token that I get from this does not work; it tells me A user access token is required to request this resource.
Why must I get a User Access Token when it's my App (aka my website) that wants the data?
Honestly I didn't think it would be hard to get this information since it is a completely public page; I would have guessed you don't even need to authenticate, but probably just some need sort of identifying token for your app for rate limiting, etc. Is there any method like that?

How to detect joined date via Facebook, Google OAuth

My website allow users to signup by their Google or Facebook account. But some users use clone account to signup for spamming, so I want to detect and allow only Facebook or Google account which was created at least 1 year ago to signup.
I know that Facebook and Google API do not allow to see that information, do you have any opinions about this, please help me.
Thank you vẻry much.
I have few thoughts over this. In my view I do not think that information can be available via API. Both Facebook and Google have strong layer of security with some abstractions in terms of data they shared about a perticular entity. IMHO (in my humble opinion), it appears too much internal to me regardless of the fact that you have fair enough information being shared by their rich set of API.
Here is an overview of what Facebook has mentioned regarding permissions:
When a person logs into your app via Facebook Login you can access a
subset of that person's data stored on Facebook. Permissions are how
you ask someone if you can access that data. A person's privacy
settings combined with what you ask for will determine what you can
access.
However you can check what permission you have been grant access to in your app by Facebook.
For Google API, i did not see/find such information. Check obtaining user profile section.
So is there anything we do to check spammers?
Well, not in kind of way we anticipated, but one thing that could be helpful is the email verification. Most of the spam users do not like to provide valid/verified email addresses while sign up.
Calling the Facebook Graph API like https://graph.facebook.com/version/me/?access_token=token&fields=verified (where verified can be true or false). I saw some users report that it brings in whether the account has been verified, not the email.
In Google API, we can get the profile by calling the people.getOpenIdConnect endpoint. This method has email_verified property which returns true only if the email address is valid.
These may or may not be helpful but something is better than nothing until some better option get available in future versions of API.
Conclusion
Besides it is certainly not in scope of a developer using the API to control fake/spam users from signing up on either of these social networking giants. I believe that apart from checking the authentication, it is not easy to detect/filter out the such users out of million users even at their end.

Facebook Graph API - Get profile picture prior to authenticating

Ok so i've tried the following:
FB.api("/me", {fields: "picture"}, function(response){
console.log(response);
});
And i'm trying to work around http://graph.facebook.com/USERNAME_OR_USERID/picture since obviously i don't know the users ID prior to authenticating.
All i want is a "modern" feel within the website, so i'd like to present the user with his or her's profile picture on the "login" div presenting the facebook login button. Is this possible? I know that Facebook and their graph api prohibits most such features but i would hope that a public profile picture would be accessible through the graph API..
I've Googled around and all the solutions say "use the USERNAME in the URL and you're fine" but i'm not, so to clear out any doubts, is this possible?
Error message: An active access token must be used to query information about the current user.
You can get everyone's Facebook profile picture without authentication.
You just call http://graph.facebook.com/USERNAME_OR_USERID/picture?type=large. This URL redirects you to image URL.
Type may be normal,small or large.
I also have questions for you:
How do you want to display the picture of someone without knowing who he/she is?
How can you guess which account the visitor will use to connect?
It looks like you want to know whose Facebook account was lastly connected on the browser of your visitor. Technically, you would want to read another site's cookies, which is 1) not allowed 2) impossible.
Several additional things you need to know:
http://graph.facebook.com/USERNAME_OR_USERID/picture is a public way to retrieve someone's photo. You don't need a token for that. What else do you need?
Using FB.API("/me", ...) from the JS SDK implies that "me" represents the connected user. It cannot just be used alone.
By the way, identical questions have already been answered and accepted:
Facebook app without prompted authentication
Get Facebook user's profile picture prior to authenticating app
Why would you hope the impossible?

How can Facebook verify Facebook Connect requests?

So I'm developing my own API for my website - I'm mimicking the Facebook JS SDK in regards to how my system works. API client displays a button, popup comes up and the user can log in. Login popup issues an event to the opener window and the parent window now knows the user is logged in. That all works.
What I'm having trouble understanding is how they can verify that the refresh requests are valid. If the API client needs to send a request to the server to ask if the user is logged in and it's all in JS, then everything is transparent. The API client says, "Hi, I'm application 4jhkk2l3bnm389, is the user that's logged in on Facebook also authenticated with me? If so, can you send me a new token so I can make API calls?" and Facebook says, "Oh, you're application 4jhkk2l3bnm389? Yeah, the user is logged in and has allowed you to access their information, here's an access token."
But how does Facebook prevent an outside application that isn't the authentic application from saying, "Hey, I'M actually application 4jhkk2l3bnm389, I promise I'm not lying. Can I have an access token?"
I have no idea how they determine the difference. Obviously if it was all done through AJAX calls in modern browsers then you could just provide an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header. But if a malicious client were to use cURL then I don't think I could ever tell the difference. How does Facebook do it? A good explanation is much appreciated! Thanks!
All access tokens belongs to an app/user pair, and in order for Facebook to return such an access token to the app, these has to be verified.
The app, or client_id, is verified against the domain specified in the redirect_uri - if the page tries to use a client_id/redirect_uri pair it does not own, then it will not receive the access token as this will be passed to the valid redirect_uri (the mechanism the JS SDK uses follows the same rule).
The user, or uid, is verified using the cookie Facebook sets when you sign in.
While you can easily spoof the client_id/redirect_uri pair using curl, the same does not apply to the uid, as you would have to be in the possession of the users cookie. And if this is the case, well, then you could simply grant your own application access.
Facebook uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. You can find details of how Facebook deals with OAuth right here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/. There are many different ways OAuth can be used, depending on whether you're on a mobile device, a page on facebook.com itself, or, in your case, just a web page outside of facebook.com. The details of that final flow can be found here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/client-side/.
Basically, Facebook knows what applications you have given permission to view your information. When you run one of those applications, they first make sure you are logged in to Facebook, then they request a user access token from Facebook, essentially saying, "Hey Facebook, I don't know this person, nor should I. Can I get access to their information?". And then Facebook looks internally and if it decides this particular application should have access to this user's information, it sends a user token.
That's the simple way of describing it. There are many different ways the authentication flow can happen, depending as I said earlier on what kind of device the request is happening from, whether this is a page on facebook.com, etc., essentially based on your security constraints. Best to read the Facebook authentication docs referred to earlier for the details since it can get quite tricky.

OAuth and Facebook page tabs

I'm in need of more of an explanation than an answer, per se - I'm building a page tab, which will pull certain images from a particular album belonging to the page. This does not require an access token, so there is no need to ask for permissions from visitors.
I can add like/share options which also work fine without an access token or authorisation.
How do I get basic user info (id, name etc) without requesting authorisation? It's a page tab, on Facebook, so therefore the visitor must be logged in already.
Just seems counter intuitive if I have to request permissions to perform what is essentially pretty standard actions.
I'm using the javascript SDK.
It's a page tab, on Facebook, so therefore the visitor must be logged in already.
The user may be logged in to Facebook – but he is not necessarily connected to your app (yet). And you need him to be, to get his user id.
Make a call to FB.login without asking for any permissions in the scope parameter – that’ll prompt the user to connect to your app, giving it only “basic” permissions to read his personal data. That’ll give you his user id in the response.authResponse (and also will lead to his user id being included in the signed_request next time he visits your page tab).
After that, you can get his basic user info be calling /me via the Graph API.

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