CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpfacebookcurlcronfacebook-access-token
labago
labago

Reputation: 1346

How to access facebook Graph with Cron Job given their new polices

I am having trouble figuring this out. Facebook is implementing a new policy https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/offline-access-removal/ that no longer allows for the simpler "offline_access" tokens that you used to be allowed to get. I am developing an application that needs to access the Graph API every 3 hours with a cronjob, and I am not sure how to set this up so that I dont need to login to access it, since I cant login with a cronjob if I am redirected to a login page. I am assuming I need to use some sort of a Curl call within a php script to get this working. I dont need to post anything, all I am doing is grabbing posts from a few public pages. Any Ideas? I already have a script in place that can do what I want it to, given that I log in first with the login_url. Just need this working with a cronjob.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1460

Answers (1)

petr
petr

Reputation: 2586

First of all a reply to the first question - there is nothing to be done on your side. The facebook's change simply means that this kind of applications is no longer possible. The best thing you can do is to request an extended token, which then lasts around 30 (or 60, not sure) days. To request it you need to call the fb api - as shown here and here (albeit not python examples, they are useful pointers). Official FB's explanation is here.

However, this token is going to be invalidated on every occasion the user changes their password, remove the app or log out of facebook. You would need to have a look which requests failed and manually notify the users to renew the token at your side and store the new one.

To your second question about crawling public posts - do you even need an access token? Try using the Graph API without it and see if you can get to the information you are interested in.

Upvotes: 1

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