Using FB PHP API to post status update to news feed - php

Question

I run a music search engine, I already use basic Facebook intergration, like the like button, but my next aim is to create deeper intergration,
I'm aiming that when a user searches for something($q which I set as a cookie $_COOKIE['q'] ), a status update will appear, saying what they searched for and a link to my site.
I can allow a user login to facebook through JavaScript but I presume I would need to do it the PHP way.
I need to use PHP, as, after the user gives permission, I would like it that the user isn't pestered again. I have the Facebook PHP SDK and have created an app on Facebook. Online tutorials haven't really helped and i'm still on square 1, even though my PHP is okayish.
I would really appreciate if anyone gave me some guidelines/ ideas or helped code it.
Thanks in advance!
Niall

Answer 1

Well What you need to do is relatively easy. I think you already have the right java script for this but I'll add that in aswell, just incase!
Okay! First we need to add the php script at the top of your page that gets the information if the user has logged-in to their facebook:
define('FACEBOOK_APP_ID', 'YOUR APP ID');
define('FACEBOOK_SECRET', 'YOUR APP SECRET');
function get_facebook_cookie($app_id, $application_secret) {
$args = array();
parse_str(trim($COOKIE['fbs' . $app_id], '"'), $args);
ksort($args);
$payload = '';
foreach ($args as $key => $value) {
if ($key != 'sig') {
$payload .= $key . '=' . $value;
}
}
if (md5($payload . $application_secret) != $args['sig']) {
return null;
}
return $args;
}
$fbcookie = get_facebook_cookie(FACEBOOK_APP_ID, FACEBOOK_SECRET);
$fb_access_token = $fbcookie['access_token'];
I'm presuming you know about the app ID and secret etc etc... fill those out under the define section.
Next we need to add a couple of things into the html for the javascript login:
FB.init({appId: 'YOUR APP ID AGAIN', status: true,
cookie: true, xfbml: true});
FB.Event.subscribe('auth.login', function(response) {
window.location.reload();
});
That goes into your body script.
The next part is the facebook login button:
?fb:login-button perms="publish_stream,offline_access" onlogin="window.location.reload(true);" autologoutlink="true"? ?/fb:login-button?
(the question marks are the <> symbols as these conflict with the coding symbols in Stackoverflow)
Now you may wonder about the need for offline access. That's easy... I wonder about that too! lol I'm not 100% sure why that occurs but I think it's my webserver (a tad odd it is) so try it without offline permissions first and if that doesn't work then add it back in.
So that's all you have to do for the login aspect and posting aspect is a curl script:
$url = "https://graph.facebook.com/me/feed";
$ch = curl_init();
$attachment = array( 'access_token' => '' . $fb_access_token . '',
'message' => "just searched " . $q . " at http://domain.com",
);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $attachment);
$result= curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
So did you see what I did? don't forget to add if statements depending on your website layout etc etc so that users don't keep posting "i just searched at http:// domain.com" lol although that would spark that human curiosity ;) due to no searching being done thus $q=NULL and thus it'll still send nothing lol so maybe ad an if statement for when you have a query lol :P (Yes i know I added a space in the url from my 'print' version however stackoverflow is picky about how many url's I can post v_v" lol).
Please ask me if you need me to explain an other parts any further.
Good luck and happy searching!
Jon