How to post programatically to your own facebook page? - php

Question

My situation is the following.
I am the owner of a facebook app,and a facebook page.I would like to programatically(from code) post to this facebook page.
As far as I know I need a facebook app to do that so I created one.
I am using the facebook php sdk and code igniter.(I am not using the javascript sdk).
I have the facebook object.I printed it's methods and tried printint the user id while I was logged into facebook.
This did not work.
My questions are the following:
1)Why does it not work to print the facebook id?
2)What is the most simplest solution to programatically post to my facebook page ?(from my app,or from my user)
What am I doing wrong ?
This is my code
$config = array(
'appId' => 'xxxx',
'secret' => 'xxxx',
'cookie' => true,
);
$this->load->library('facebook', $config);
echo '<pre>';print_r(get_class_methods($this->facebook));
$id = $this->facebook->getAppId();
$secret =$this->facebook->getApiSecret();
$uri = "http://tipsterscorner.com/stats/display/facebook1";//callback_url se pare ca nu e bun
//i build the facebook url.If I use this in the browser ,I get a series of popups(do you allow the application to blabla)
//I read somewhere that if I change the last parametere to code,and use curl,I will get the token in the response
//printed on the screen of the return url,but that does not happen
$facebook_url = "https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?`client_id=$id&client_secret=$secret&redirect_uri=$uri&scope=publish_stream,offline_access,read_stream,manage_pages&response_type=token";`
$curl = curl_init();
// Set some options - we are passing in a useragent too here
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_URL => $facebook_url,
CURLOPT_USERAGENT => 'Codular Sample cURL Request'
));
// Send the request & save response to $resp
$resp = curl_exec($curl);
This is the url.
http://tipsterscorner.com/stats/display/facebook1
Thank you very much.

Answer 1

To post on facebook by yourself and on behalf of other's using the app you need to obtain user access token. There are two kinds of Access Tokens namely App Access Token and User Access Token. When app is posting on user's behalf User Access Token is required. User Access Token is generated when a User gives permissions for the app(The dialog popup which you experienced when entering the facebook url in browser). Its solely upon user whether or not to grant permission to the app to post on their behalf. App should be developed to handle both the situations. Once User have given permission(Basic Permission which includes all publicly available info of the user), user access token will be generated. You can either store it in database table or in SESSION. Sometimes user access tokens may become invalid and new token has to be retrieved. During that time curl can be used to retrieve because user has already granted permission for the app.
http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2011/05/13/how-to--handle-expired-access-tokens/