Bring in a facebook users stream into a webpage - php

Question

I need help on how to bring in a users personal stream.
For example when I go to this webpage I want the user to be able to see his/her facebook live profile stream as if he/she was looking at the facebook website.
Also would you recommend I use the Javascript or PHP SDK ?
Any help or links to examples would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

To get the user's stream an app needs permission to get this data
When a user logs into an app, the app gets access to their public profile and friend list - to read more info about a person, an app must request additional permissions from them
Permissions enable you to access user information. The Graph API reference provides detailed information on the kind of information stored in a user profile and the specific permissions that must be granted by the user before your app can access it.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/concepts/login/permissions-login-dialog/
In order to be granted permission you need an access token
An access token is a random string that provides temporary, secure access to Facebook APIs.
A token identifies a User, App or Page session and provides information about granted permissions. They also include information about when the token will expire and which app generated the token. Because of privacy checks, the majority of API calls on Facebook need to be signed with an access token
For a user profile, you need a user access token
User access tokens are the standard type for API calls; these are generated in the login flow when a user grants permissions to an app.
Once these basics are known, then you need to pull the data via an HTTP GET to
https://graph.facebook.com/me/feed?access_token=USER_ACCESS_TOKEN
Which will return an array of Post objects containing (up to) the last 25 posts.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/#feed
Now you have a JSON response that looks similar to this
{
"data": [
{
"id": "13608786_10101118139895617",
"from": {
"name": "Philippe Harewood",
"id": "13608786"
},
"picture": "https://fbexternal-a.akamaihd.net/safe_image.php?d=AQDuPlCx0L1BP7wp&w=130&h=130&url=http%3A%2F%2Fi4.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2F7_3hKVxOcRI%2Fmqdefault.jpg",
"link": "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_3hKVxOcRI",
"source": "http://www.youtube.com/v/7_3hKVxOcRI?version=3&autohide=1&autoplay=1",
"name": "Suit & Tie (Acoustic Cover) - Tori Kelly",
"description": "hope you enjoy my cover of Suit & Tieeee. JT is the man. for all info and tickets to my upcoming shows go to torikellymusic.com !! love you guys! -----------...",
"icon": "https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yj/r/v2OnaTyTQZE.gif",
"privacy": {
"value": ""
},
"type": "video",
"application": {
"name": "YouTube",
"namespace": "yt-fb-app",
"id": "87741124305"
},
"created_time": "2013-03-23T23:21:50+0000",
"updated_time": "2013-03-23T23:21:50+0000",
"comments": {
"count": 0
}
}
],
"paging": {
"previous": "https://graph.facebook.com/13608786/feed?limit=25&since=1364080910",
"next": "https://graph.facebook.com/13608786/feed?limit=25&until=1364080909"
}
}
Based on the language of your app, you should be able to the parse response correctly. In this case to have a near persistent stream of feed data from a user profile. You will need t o store the user access token so that the app can request access any time.
Normally a user access token only lasts for two hours so extending the token to last two months will be a wise choice. You can extend the token by using the following call
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
grant_type=fb_exchange_token&
client_id=APP_ID&
client_secret=APP_SECRET&
fb_exchange_token=SHORT_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN
You can exchange this token for a longer-lived one (that will valid for up to 60 days) by passing it to the /oauth endpoint from your server (so that the secret is not exposed) with a grant_type parameter of fb_exchange_token
Now you should store this in a database, e.g. MySQL for retrieval later.
So in summary, load your SQL
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `facebook_data` (
`ID` int(11) NOT NULL,
`access_token` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY `ID` (`ID`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
Pre-populate the data if you wish
INSERT INTO `facebook_data` (`ID`, `access_token`) VALUES
(1, 'temptoken');
Normally I tend to allow JS SDK to handle the user authentication and PHP SDK to handle the API calls. At the same time allowing the cookie set by the JS SDK to be picked up by the PHP SDK
Once the PHP SDK is set up with the cookie and has parsed the signed request
I will extend the access token and the set the new access token in the database.
$facebook->setExtendedAccessToken();
$fbdb_result = $fbdb->query("UPDATE facebook_data SET access_token='" . $facebook->getAccessToken() . "' WHERE ID = 1");
Now in my presentation page, whenever I need I will pull in the access token from the database and set the PHP SDK to the correct user.
$result = $fbdb->query("SELECT access_token FROM facebook_data WHERE ID = 1");
$access_token = mysql_result($result, 0);
$facebook->setAccessToken($access_token);
Then I ensure that no invalidation has occurred since I last stored it
// Get User ID
$user = $facebook->getUser();
if ($user) {
try {
// Proceed knowing you have a logged in user who's authenticated.
$user_profile = $facebook->api('/me');
} catch (FacebookApiException $e) {
error_log($e);
$user = null;
}
$user_posts = $facebook->api('me/feed'); // The user's feed on their wall
}
Then start handling each post and displaying it with some styled CSS
foreach($user_posts['data'] as $post){
$post_link = $post['actions'][0]['link'];
$page_id = $post['from']['id'];
$page_name = $post['from']['name'];
$message = ($post['message']) ? $post['message'] : " ";
$name = ($post['name']) ? $post['name'] : " ";
$story = ($post['story']) ? $post['story'] : " ";
$post_time = $post['updated_time'];
}

Answer 2

You can create a badge for your site (the gear wheel at the top-right of your FB profile) and click on "edit badge". There are quite a few options available.