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phpjavascriptfacebook-graph-api
Jakob
Jakob

Reputation: 4854

Facebook api - PHP / Javascript and OpenGraph

I'm very confused so I hope that my question will make sense.

I'm working with the facebook API, and so far I've implemented login and a post to the users wall via php. I know read a bit more about the OpenGraph system, and the meta tags that you're supposed to put in your site, but I'm not quite grasping the concept og how to get my site fully PHP integrated with Facebook.

I have another login system which I've hooked facebook up to, so switching to javascript only will not be an option. Do the meta tags even matter if I use PHP only. I mean, I can't really get my head around how the token and all of that would be interpreted alongside the og: metatags if there is no javascript on the site.

Can I have BOTH php and javascript authentication? What's all that fuzz about opengraph anyway?

These are my thoughts about working with facebook, and if you'd like me to summarize this up in one question I guess it'd be:

How do I benefit from the opengraph meta tag features (tracking the users, in their timeline) when I'm only connected via PHP?

I'm confused about how the tags for specific open graph actions get interpreted like 

<meta property="fb:app_id"      content="xxxxxxxxxx" /> 
  <meta property="og:type"        content="myapp:read" />

and then it's supposed to post "MyName is reading lalala" or "MyName read lalala". How's the post to the server going on (if people have already authenticated via php):) ?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 771

Answers (2)

evanesis
evanesis

Reputation: 258

I can confirm that you're not the only one to be frustrated with the Facebook Documentation. With that being said, i'll try to help you. As Sean said, the og graph tags have little or nothing to do with your authentication flow. These are featured as information of what the user is doing at a certain time, like listening to a song, playing to one particular game, etc...

The Facebook's PHP SDK provides you functions to create your own objects and actions. Then you can call a $facebook->api(/...) function to indication to Facebook : My user is ACTIONS an OBJECT. Doing this, you must provide a parameter, which is the URL of the OBJECT on your Website/Application. In fact, Facebook wants you to tell him where he can finds what's this object. On a page where there's the correct meta-tags corresponding to this object ! Here are your og tags.

As you said, this will provide stories found in the timeline, or the ticker. It's those kind of things that Facebook Games use, "X is playing to Y", "Z earned the Grand Master title by playing on A", etc...

You must define those objects on your Facebook Applications Panel, and have the corresponding meta-tags on your website. Then you just have to make the $facebook->api(/...) (or equivalent) request when this action happens on your website/application !

Everything is almost entirely explained in this tutorial : http://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/opengraph/

Hope this will help you to find an answer.

Upvotes: 1

Sean
Sean

Reputation: 372

Unless I am misunderstanding your question, I think you are confusing how the Open Graph meta tags work. The meta tags provide external websites with exactly what they say: meta information, to be read by Facebook's "crawler". Facebook has their own web crawler that will grab certain relevant information about a webpage (for example, page title, page description, an image to associate with a webpage) so that Facebook can use that info when people "Like" or "Share" a webpage.

For example, going to https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://example.com should illustrate how the crawler works: when someone tries to share the URL example.com on Facebook, Facebook's crawler goes to the example.com webpage and grabs relevant info, then displays it on their own page to allow you to share it with others.

The open graph tags have little or nothing to do with authenticating a user or application on Facebook's servers. They can be used totally independently of any login system that you have in place, as far as I know. All they do is provide meta information about a web page to Facebook's web crawler.

I understand your frustration with Facebook's API though - they are notoriously bad about keeping detailed, accurate information, and they change the API so frequently it's nearly impossible to keep up.

Upvotes: 3

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