iOS Facebook Can't post source image to wall can only post links

Question

So from reading around a bit on this issue, it is becoming apparent to me that I cannot post an image/photo from my app to my wall as a source attachment. The only way I can show an image in a wall post is by linking to an image on the internet. I can only post a photo form within the app to the photo album on facebook.

So my question is, does anyone know how I can get my in-app image posted to my facebook wall (and not posting the image to the photoalbum)?

Answer 1

Facebook now allows images in the wall posts that are hosted on fbcdn.net domain. It may not completely answer your question as you don't want the images in the photo album. But here are the steps.

1. Get photo_upload permission from the user
2. Once granted, upload photo to an album (users can only post photos to their own albums)
3. In the callback, you get the id of the photo object just posted.
4. Get properties for this photo object via another graph api call.
5. In the callback, you get all the properties - search for the object url
6. Create a wall post and use the retrieved url (in step 5) in the attachment.

It will display the image in the wall post. However, if you don't want to upload images to user album, you still need to host the image somewhere before you can include the link.

Answer 2

Sounds like you have the same problem I had just a couple of weeks ago. Did you also get the error message starting "FBCDN image is not allowed in stream..."?

It seems you've already figured it out, but since Facebook isn't quite as informative towards developers as they could, other readers may benefit from this, too.

• Your app can easily send photos to the user's Facebook photo album
• Your app can easily post to the user's News Feed
• You can even use Facebook Graph API to pick up the ID of the photo you just sent, and use that to assemble the URL for the photo (the URL works just fine – typing it into your browser will show the photo, no problem)
• BUT your app simply cannot use the photo URL in any News Feed Posts. And contrary to what one might assume, this is not a bug or any other problem you could fix, but a Facebook policy since summer, 2010.

Here's the official RSS feed stating their decision:

Serving Images in Stream Stories Jun 18, 2010 3:21pm

We no longer allow stream stories to contain images that are hosted on the fbcdn.net domain. The images associated with these URLs aren't always optimized for stream stories and occasionally resulted in errors, leading to a poor user experience. Make sure your stream attachments don't reference images with this domain. You should host the images locally.

In conclusion, if you must have the News Feed post, you need to host the photos on your own server and link to them in the post, as Siegfried said. Although, some successful developers would argue that if you want to make your app scalable, in case it becomes the next big thing in App Store, avoid using your own server (See the Pulse News app's makers comments here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/developing-apps-for-ios-sd/id395631522# - hack #3)

As for me, since my app's so tiny, and I'm a small-time developer, it didn't make sense to start hosting stuff on a server of my own, so I just settled to uploading the photo to the user's Facebook account anyways and using the photo caption to tell the user's friends what I had to say, instead of the wall post.

Answer 3

I think you should use a server with some php scripts - then use ASIHTTP library or sth similar to upload your photo there - as a result you should get a link to the photo on your server. then use it while publishing to fb.

sounds scary but it's not that bad - ASIHTTP is very straightforward, there are tons of php scriptw for uploading photos on the net

Answer 4

I asked this question a while ago and figured out an answer too. Here you go:

Facebook Connect on iOS - Picture doesn't display with wall post