CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosfacebookfacebook-graph-apiios6
toblerpwn
toblerpwn

Reputation: 5545

Facebook Open Graph story about a photo already in a Facebook album?

GOAL:

I'm building an iOS photo/entertainment app, and have a very simple goal: to upload a photo to Facebook, then share the photo using Facebook's Open Graph stories (e.g. "[user] [verbed] a photo using [app name]").

(It turns out iOS 6's SLComposeViewController does not allow this natively. I was hoping it would. Boo.)

SITUATION:

I don't have a robust webspace - and don't want one - so if a user clicks on the Open Graph story in their timeline (etc), I would prefer to simply link back to the photo on Facebook.

I can get the photo uploaded - AND retrieve its URL - but I cannot get the Open Graph story to work! Here's where I'm at:

Photo Upload to Facebook Album: OK

I use FBRequest's requestForPhotoUpload method from the iOS SDK (latest version as of September 17) and record the photopost result using batchEntryName. This is basically lifted straight from the FB Open Graph tutorial.

Photo URL Retrieval: OK

Here I use FBRequest's requestForGraphPath method - again basically per the FB OG tutorial. Here is an example of the URL I retrieve back:

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/<long_number_string_with_underscores>_n.jpg

Publish Open Graph Story: DOES NOT WORK

With this, I construct an OG HTTP request as follows:

https://<MY_SITE>.herokuapp.com/repeater.php?fb:app_id=<MY_FB_APP_ID>
&og:type=<APP_NAMESPACE>:photo
&og:title=a+rad+photo
&og:description=%22a+rad+photo%22
&og:image=https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/<long_number_string_with_underscores>_n.jpg
&og:url=https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/<long_number_string_with_underscores>_n.jpg
&body=a+rad+photo

But this does not work. The problem I encounter might be obvious to the veterans: FB's image is returning an og:type of website (this must be derived from static OG tags on FB's page?), and so the OG story fails.

I think you can get my OG results here (from the debugger):

https://graph.facebook.com/120073804807493

(I have also tried return my entire OG request as the og:url, but that just links back to a blank page on my webserver - see repeater.php code below.)

So...what can I do about it? How might I get this to work? Do I really need to spin up an entire web property just to host and display images when all I'm building is an iOS app and all I want to do is post to a user's photo album?!

More Info: Here is the source for repeater.php (see: FB OG tutorial), if it matters:

<?php
function curPageURL() {
 $pageURL = 'http://';
 if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
  $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].":".$_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
 } else {
  $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
 }
 return $pageURL;
}
?>

<html>
  <head prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns# product: http://ogp.me/ns/product#">
    <meta property="fb:app_id" content="<?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['fb:app_id']);?>">
      <meta property="og:url" content="<?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['og:url']);?>">
      <meta property="og:type" content="<?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['og:type']);?>">
      <meta property="og:title" content="<?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['og:title']);?>">
      <meta property="og:image" content="<?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['og:image']);?>">
      <meta property="og:description" content="<?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['og:description']);?>">
  </head>
    <body>
      <?php echo strip_tags($_REQUEST['body']);?>
    </body>
</html>

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1000

Answers (1)

toblerpwn
toblerpwn

Reputation: 5545

After much research, regretfully I don't think it's possible to use photos you upload to Facebook as Open Graph objects. Facebook's pages simply aren't marked-up dynamically enough for one of their photos to be an Open Graph object (understandably), so we're on our own.. ;)

(Though I strongly suspect that in iOS 6.1 or 7.0 they will allow something like this; I have to imagine demand for this skyrocketing with SLRequest coming in to fashion..)

Ideas for others who may come across this in the future:

  • There are some clever things you can do with straight uploads and album names to mimic an Open Graph story. Check my other Stack post, here, for some technical stuff that wasn't covered in their Tutorials: Facebook iOS SDK: Cannot specify an album using FBRequest's requestForUploadPhoto:
  • If you have even moderate skills in web dev, don't overlook Facebook's Heroku integration (you can get to it from your Facebook App settings page) - https://developers.facebook.com/apps
  • If you're dealing with a lot of photos in particular, my god Parse has given us a blessing with an Instagram clone that they've open-sourced - https://parse.com/anypic - yes, that's BOTH WEB AND iPHONE source code you see! Drop that on your Heroku server and start tinkering, and you're cooking with grease if you want something massive and social.

Upvotes: 1

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