Displaying a Facebook newsfeed/timeline on a website - php

Question

I have a client who wants their company's Facebook newsfeed/timeline to be displayed on their website. It's not a personal timeline/newsfeed, but an organisation's.
Everything I've read seems a few years old, but the upshot appears to be: Facebook wants to keep all its data on its own servers -- they don't want people exporting it, and people have been banned for trying. (As I say, this information was several years old.)
The closest current thing I've found is the Activity Feed Plugin, but that only registers other user's interactions with the site or a FB app.
Has anyone had any success exporting their public updates to an external website, or do I have to tell my client that it can't be done?
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

AFAIK, it is possible, in a way. The simplest solution, but not best for your situation could be the Like Box plugin:
The Like Box enables users to:
See how many users already like this Page, and which of their friends like it too
Read recent posts from the Page
Like the Page with one click, without needing to visit the Page
Better solution: use their Graph API, however you can only read the data(as JSON), not have the stream exactly replicated on your client's website, don't expect to be able to apply the styles that facebook uses(i.e you won't be able to scrape it), you'll have to either replicate it, or create your own styles.
Now if the page is public and can be read by all, as in there are no privacy rules, then you can simply call the url with any valid access_token(can be app access_token also):
https://graph.facebook.com/<clientpagename_OR_id>/feed
or
https://graph.facebook.com/<clientpagename_OR_id>/posts
depending on what exactly you need, try the graph api explorer to check that(and also see the kind of data being returned). When there are lots of posts, there will be pagination urls, which you'll be able to notice in the explorer too.
Incase the page is not public, you'll need an access_token with the read_stream permission, hence you'll need to create a facebook app, of type website. Then get your client's page's admin to authorize the app, with read_stream permission. After that you can call the urls with the access_token that you receive after authentication and can continue reading the stream.
https://graph.facebook.com/<clientpagename_OR_id>/posts?access_token=thetoken
In this case use the PHP SDK, to simplify authentication and calling the graph api.
Important Links: Authentication Guide , Real-time-updates.
Good luck.
Edit: you do need an access token to access the feed or posts connections, but you do not necessarily need an access token to read the page object itself, as given in this documentation.
Note from the doc:
For connections that require an access token, you can use any valid access token if the page is public and not restricted. Connections on restricted pages require a user access token and are only visible to users who meet the restriction criteria (e.g. age) set on the page.

Answer 2

You can retrieve the organization's newsfeed using Facebook's Graph API. Timeline can't be retrieved via public API.
There is no plugin to do this. You would need to call
https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID/home
which gives you a JSON response.
You then need to parse the JSON into a new layout on the organization's web page.
Confusingly, calling
https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID/feed
doesn't retrieve the newsfeed, but a user's wall posts, which may or may not be what you want.
Here is a tutorial that goes through the basics of setting up a newsfeed on a website with php.

Answer 3

The easiest way to do this is to read the Facebook timeline RSS:
function FacebookFeed($pagename, $count, $postlength) {
$pageID = file_get_contents('https://graph.facebook.com/?ids='.$pagename.'&fields=id');
$pageID = json_decode($pageID,true);
$pageID = $pageID[$pagename]['id'];
ini_set('user_agent', 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9');
$rssUrl = 'http://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=rss20&id='.$pageID;
$xml = simplexml_load_file($rssUrl);
$entry = $xml->channel->item;
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) {
$description_original = $entry[$i]->description;
$description_striphtml = strip_tags($description_original);
$description = substr($description_striphtml, 0, $postlength);
$link = $entry[$i]->link;
$date_original = $entry[$i]->pubDate;
$date = date('d-m-Y, H:i', strtotime($date_original));
$FB_feed .= $description."…<br>";
$FB_feed .= "<small><a href='".$link."'>".$date."</a></small><br><br>";
}
return $FB_feed;
}

Answer 4

Yes, it can be done. First register the web site at facebook's developer page. Than you can use any suitable API for interacting with FB. Sometimes ago I used SpringSocial (since I was working tightly with Spring)... You can use FB's own api which is also very useful you can read the tutorial here

Answer 5

It can definitely be done. You just need to get an access token through facebook and then you can access a JSON feed of posts through the facebook API.
You need to go to the facebook developer site and click on Apps at the top. Follow the steps to get an app secret and client ID. Then just put them into the following URL and it will return your access token:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID&client_secret=YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET
Step by step instructions here: http://smashballoon.com/custom-facebook-feed/access-token/

Answer 6

This document details the steps to obtain the facebook access tokens and the using the tokens to fetch FB feeds.
Example:
A live example is available in
https://newtonjoshua.com
Introduction to Graph API:
The Graph API is the primary way to get data in and out of Facebook's platform. It's a low-level HTTP-based API that you can use to query data, post new stories, manage ads, upload photos and a variety of other tasks that an app might need to do.
FaceBook Apps:
https://developers.facebook.com
Create a Facebook app. You will get an App_Id and App_Secret
Graph API Explorer:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer/{{App_Id}}/?method=GET&path=me%2Ffeed&version=v2.8
You will get an access_token which is short lived. So this will be our short_lived_access_token.
note: while creating access token select all the fb fields that you require.This will give permission to the access token to fetch those fields.
Access Token Extension:
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 will get an access_token with a validity of 2 months.
Access Token Debugger:
https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/accesstoken?q={{access_token}}&version=v2.8
you can check check the details of the access_token.
Facebook SDK for JavaScript:
Include the below JavaScript in your HTML to asynchronously load the SDK into your page
(function (d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {
return;
}
js = d.createElement(s);
js.id = id;
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js";
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
Graph API:
Let's make an API call to get our FB id, profile pic, cover pic and feeds.
window.fbAsyncInit = function () {
FB.init({
appId: '{{App_Id }}',
xfbml: true,
version: 'v2.7'
});
FB.api(
'/me',
'GET', {
fields: 'id,picture{url},cover,feed',
access_token: {{access_token}}
},
function (response) {
if (response.error) {
console.error(response.error.message);
}
if (response.picture.data.url) {
profilePic = response.picture.data.url;
}
if (response.cover.source) {
coverPic = response.cover.source;
}
if (response.feed.data) {
feeds = response.feed.data;
feeds.forEach(function (feed) {
// view each feed content
});
}
if (response.feed.paging.next) {
nextFeedPage = response.feed.paging.next;
// a request to nextFeedPage will give the next set of feeds
}
}
);
};
Use the Graph API Explorer to design your query that should be entered in the 'fields' (eg: 'id,picture{url},cover,feed')
Now you can fetch your Facebook data from Facebook Graph API using your access_token.
Refer to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/overview/
Note: Your access_token will expire in 2 months. Create a new access_token after that.