Automating posts from "company" for the Facebook page of said "company" - javascript

I put company in between quotations because my question relates to our Rugby team page but in Facebook it acts like a company page.
I am currently rebuilding my teams website (BBRFC Celtic) and I am going to add a user login system which will have coaches and admin staff with different levels of authority.
Sometimes due to weather conditions, events, or other things a training time may be changed or a match canceled or other various events. When these happen we normally send emails through a mailing list or sms or post on Facebook by hand.
What I want to have is a little bot of some kind that runs behind the scenes of the server and when coaches or admins change something it allows them to make an automated post to Facebook.
Something like after changing a trainings time it asking Would you like this to be posted to the facebook page and groups?.
I have been unsuccessful in finding out how I would go about writing the code for this. Our webpage will use php but maybe this can be done with javascript?
Do I need to get a key to post something as if I were the page?
How about to the different groups we have?
Any pointers would be helpful since I am totally stuck not really programmatically but more conceptually, I do not know if this is even possible.

I will explain the steps you need to accomplish your goal for a website. Note that the documentation also explains the case of a mobile application and others. I used the facebook API before, however, not to manage groups/pages, hence, this post will only point you in the right direction. I will explain how to post a message as being the admin of the page, not sure if you meant facebook pages or groups.
First, the user need to log in with facebook. This can be done using Javascript and the facebook API. Their documentation provides a very detailed explanation with code examples etc. Note that i will explain for the case of Javascript, however, this could be done in php, ...
Once the user is logged in, you can retrieve all kind of information about the user, his pages, etc. I would suggest to retrieve the pages the user is managing, then check if your "company" is part of this list (note that you will need the manage_pages permission). If this is the case, the user can post a message in name of the page.
/* Retrieve pages the user is managing */
FB.api(
"/me/accounts",
function (response) {
if (response && !response.error) {
/* handle the result */
}
}
);
Now response is an object containing multiple fields (see the official documentation).
Now, if the user is an administrator of your page, you can post a message as a Page.
/* Post a message as a Page, use your page id */
FB.api(
"/{page-id}/feed",
"POST",
{
"message": "The match has been delayed to ..."
},
function (response) {
if (response && !response.error) {
/* handle the result */
}
}
);
If successful, the ID of the post will be returned as part of a JSON response (see doc)

Related

Azure mobile services scripts

I am very new to using server scripts, and I am sure this is a very simple answer but I have not found what I am looking for anywhere yet. I am using azure mobile services to retrieve and input user information, and want to prevent a user from seeing other users id numbers.
to read the data, the program makes the following http request
"GET http://Servicename.net/tables/TableName?$top=1&$orderby=__createdAt%20desc&$filter=id+eq+'"+id+"' HTTP/1.1"
the id is determined by the account the user is currently on, but I do not want the user to be able to remove the id, making a request such as the following and retrieving the entire table along with the other users id
"GET http://Servicename.net/tables/TableName HTTP/1.1"
What I would like to do is use server side scripts, specifically the read operation script, to make sure the request has a id associated with it, and only the data with that specific id is returned.
I have tried the following:
function read(query, user, request) {
if(request.parameter.id != null){
request.execute();
}
}
This does not work, so my question is how do I retrieve the id number from the http request and use it within the script? I hope my question was clear, and any help is greatly appreciated!
I would refer you to my series on Azure Mobile Apps: https://shellmonger.com/30-days-of-azure-mobile-apps-the-table-of-contents/
In particular, look at Day 6 - Personal Tables. This shows how to restrict the data being returned to the user by the authenticated user ID.
If you want to retrieve the user id in the table operations in Mobile Service. You can use the second the argument user, which is always a user object that represents the user that submitted the request.
And you can find a code snippet to explain the usage at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/mobile-services-how-to-use-server-scripts/#table-scripts:
function insert(item, user, request) {
if (item.userId !== user.userId) {
request.respond(statusCodes.FORBIDDEN,
'You may only insert records with your userId.');
} else {
request.execute();
}
}
Please refer to Work with a JavaScript backend mobile service for more info about Mobile Services in Node.js.
Additionally, now we have suggested to use Mobile Apps instead of Mobile Services. You can refer to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-mobile-value-prop-migration-from-mobile-services/ for details.

Facebook API profile picture

I created a website for my Students Organization.
On that website there is a page where I list all the people who helped organize our Activities. Theres a picture of every member there.
To get the images, I used their facebook profile pictures.
I used http://graph.facebook.com/USERNAME/picture?height=250&width=250
This code did work a few days ago, but now the images dont seem to load. I followed the url and got a JSON object:
{
"error": {
"message": "(#803) Cannot query users by their username (user.name)",
"type": "OAuthException",
"code": 803
}
}
So it seems to me that facebook might have changed their security... (after googling I found out about some changes in their API 2.0 but I didnt fully understand that..)
This link does still seem to work if you have the userID, but I'm unable to get that userID because of the same error message through graph.facebook.com...
Is there still a way to get facebook profile pictures of people on your website or did facebook totally block this off??
Any help is appreciated!
If you want to use the data, you'll need to implement Facebook Login for your website, where the users can give their permissions to your app to use their data.
The username field is no longer accessible with the Graph API v2.0. There are at least 5-10 questions on this on StackOverflow today.
Look at the docs:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog#v2_0

Replicating parse.com anypic in JavaScript - Unable to compare Fb users

I'm using parse.com to build the back end of my app. I want the user to be able to find their friends that are using my app and who they are friends with on Facebook.
I'm using JavaScript, however unlike IOS, here https://www.parse.com/tutorials/anypic#follow there are no examples on how to build the app
I have used the Fb SDK to pull back a users friend connections, but I'm stumped on how to proceed next.
I guess I need to run a query between the returned data and my current users data and look for matches and then return them?
Has any one experience doing this? can share some code or point me in the direction of external resources?
FB.getLoginStatus(function (response) {
if (response.status === 'connected') {
FB.api('/me/friends', function(response){
if (response && response.data){
for (var friendIndex=0; friendIndex<data.length; friendIndex++)
} else {
console.log('Something goes wrong', response);
}
});
}
});
The only way to do this reliably, which has nothing to do with language, is a multi-step process:
One: Provide a way to "connect to facebook". In this process, you pull the user's facebook id and store it as a field on the user profile in parse. This is the field you need to match friends.
You will only be able to reliably match the user's friends who has ALSO CONNECTED THEIR APP TO FACEBOOK (and thereby stored their facebook id in their user profile).
Two: Perform a query against Parse with the user's friends' facebook IDs. For every friend facebook id you find in your Parse user database, you display their name etc FROM FACEBOOK (so they recognize them easily).
This means that when you add this functionality, nobody will find their friends from facebook in their app. Only when some of their friends connect to facebook will they be able to find facebook friends like this.
You can i.e. check for this on app launch, and then notify the user that some of their facebook friends are now using your app.

JS SDK - Posting to a page wall

I am using the JavaScript SDK. I have an application that has publishing permissions and after certain actions are taken a post will be made to the logged in users wall like so:
FB.getLoginStatus(function (response) {
//we are authorized
if (response.status == "connected") {
var name = "Post name";
var body = "Post body";
var caption = "The caption";
var description = "The description";
var link = "http://www.facebook.com/mypage";
FB.api('/me/feed', 'post', { message:body,caption:caption,link:link,name:name,description:description}, function (response) {
console.log(response);
});
}
});
What I would like to able to do is post to a specific Facebook Page after a post is successfully made to the users page. Is there a way to securely pre-authorize an application to do that? Is this possible with the JavaScript SDK, or at all? I did some looking around and havn't found a definite answer. I'm looking at the FB documentation but find it to be a bit spotty in places. Could anyone tell me if this is possible? Any help or advice would be very much appreciated, thanks much!
Edit: my mistake, I should have supplied more info. Here is what I am trying to do:
var body = "The body";
var caption = "The caption";
FB.api("mypageid/feed", "post", { message: body, caption: caption }, function (response) {
console.log(response);
});
I am getting the error "this api call requires a valid app_id" however my page id is valid. When I call FB.init() I am passing my app id and it works for the first post to the logged in users feed.
Edit:
I have made the change the Igy suggested. Now I am getting the error:""(#200) The user has not granted the application the permission to automatically publish feed stories""
Now, as I said I am trying to post to a Facebook page. I have logged into the account that owns the page and I have gone to the app and clicked allow for the following permissions:
email,user_photos,publish_stream
When I am logged in with the account that owns the page and check my status:
FB.getLoginStatus(function (response) {
console.log(response);
});
I get "connected". Am I doing this incorrectly? Do I have to do more than just authorize with the account that owns the page? Is there a way to set allow permissions for a page? I did a little digging but couldn't find an answer.
Edit :
Ok, now what is happening is IF I am logged into the account that owns the page the post will be made to the page. If I am logged in with another account I get an id back as a response to the API call but it doesn't seem to be a valid object id. For instance I just got this back:
id: 499973616681852_507724422573438
if I go to http://graph.facebook.com/499973616681852_507724422573438
I get an "unsupported get request" graph api exception, which suggest that id returned is not valid. I feel like I am close here but I am missing something. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks again to all who responded.
edit: removed the link to the page,that was left in unintentionally.
It's good practice to try getting it to work in the graph explorer first. Note that on the top right you can select which application to run under. I just made a post to your page using /PAGE_ID/feed and it worked fine. You'll need the publish_stream permission. If you can get it to work in the graph explorer you'll know it's possible to get it to work in the JS SDK and you've just made some sort of syntax error.
Also note there is an open high priority bug report on some calls to the graph returning "unsupported get request". So even though the id you are getting back is invalid, check the page itself to see if the posts are appearing.
I also noticed that the user itself is getting the same error. Try https://graph.facebook.com/507724422573438. Is this a test user for your app? Might be worth trying this as a real user if so.
Since you want to post to the page as the page itself, you'll need to authenticate as a page and then use that access token when making graph api calls. I am not sure if you'll be able to then use this access token for any user, or only users that are allowed to manage the page. It would be best for you to use the graph explorer to do some experiments to find out.

make turn on/off or deauthorized user from my app, and list action of user from app

I submitting an app to Facebook with open graph news read type by javascript.
All done so well with flow from user asking for authorized my app, and show the button help user can public the article then they can remove if they want to.
Today I got the request from Facebook need to change my app:
requirements
(https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/actions/builtin/#read).
Please make sure your users can (1) Turn sharing on/off globally on
each page an article appears. (2) Remove articles they shared within
your app on each page an article appears. (3) Only generate read
actions when you're sure someone is interested in reading the article
- only publish after 10 seconds.
The third request is easy just use timeout to show the button submit after user read article.
The seconds is so hard because I don't know how to full the array list of pass action of user doing with my app include action id and title of article they post which I can use to create "remove link" for each of them if user want to.
The fist request I did search for method of javascript to de-authorized the app from user (not revoke permission) so I can ask user to be reauthorized if they need.
Please help.
Beside I see very nice 2 sample in guild page
https://developers.facebook.com/attachment/OG_App_PublishToggle.png
https://developers.facebook.com/attachment/OG_App_DeleteActivity.png
But they din't give out the link of live site using it.
or may be that is one of Facebook markup similar "recommend box" , but how/where we can get it?
Please advices for the script or sample as Facebook dose will be help full
regards
UPDATE 1 I found the way to reauthorized all app or revoke one permission.
here the function:
var permsNeededPub = "publish_stream";
///notice that if permission is "publish_actions" revoke function not work
function xlfb_revokePerm() {
FB.api("/me/permissions", "delete",{permission:permsNeededPub}, function(response){
console.log(response);
if(response){
console.log(' Remove success '+permsNeededPub);
}
});
}
function xlfb_removeApp() {
FB.api("/me/permissions", "delete", function(response){
console.log("User removed the app from acount: "+response);
});
};
The seconds is so hard because I don't know how to full the array list of pass action of user doing with my app include action id and title of article they post which I can use to create "remove link" for each of them if user want to.
Whenever a user takes an OG action on your site - save the action_instance_id you are getting back from the API call and whatever extra data you might need to your database.
The fist request I did search for method of javascript to de-authorized the app from user (not revoke permission) so I can ask user to be reauthorized if they need.
Why would you want to de-authorize the app?
All that’s required here is to have a global on/off switch for all sharing activity – so if the user sets it to off, then you just don’t publish any actions for him as long as he leaves this setting set to off.

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