Authentication

Before interacting with Meta's Graph API, understanding a few concepts about profiles can be useful.

Profile

You can interact with posts on behalf of a profile. This can either be a page or a user.

The difference between the two is where you post to, and therefore what permissions you need. The user profile posts to the user's personal profile, while the page profile posts to the one of the user's pages.

Credentials

Once you've chosen a profile (or both), it's useful to know what credentials are created. You probably won't need these, as most work done with these credentials is handled automatically, but it's good to know what's going on under the hood.

import Facebook from "bookface";
import type { Config } from "bookface";

const config: Config = {};
const facebook = new Facebook(config);

// App ID
const appID = facebook.id;
const appSecret = facebook.secret;
console.log({ appID, appSecret });

// App Token
const appToken = facebook.access.app.token;
const appTokenExpires = facebook.access.app.expires;
const appTokenValid = facebook.access.app.valid;
console.log({ appToken, appTokenExpires, appTokenValid });

// Page ID
const pageID = facebook.info.page.id;
const pageIDExpires = facebook.info.page.expires;
const pageIDValid = facebook.info.page.valid;
const pageIndex = facebook.info.index;
console.log({ pageID, pageIDExpires, pageIDValid, pageIndex });

// Page Token
const pageToken = facebook.access.page.token;
const pageTokenExpires = facebook.access.page.expires;
const pageTokenValid = facebook.access.page.valid;
console.log({ pageToken, pageTokenExpires, pageTokenValid });

// User ID
const userID = facebook.info.user.id;
const userIDExpires = facebook.info.user.expires;
const userIDValid = facebook.info.user.valid;
console.log({ userID, userIDExpires, userIDValid });

// User Token
const userToken = facebook.access.user.token;
const userTokenExpires = facebook.access.user.expires;
const userTokenValid = facebook.access.user.valid;
console.log({ userToken, userTokenExpires, userTokenValid });

• Profile ID: The ID of the profile you're acting on behalf of.
  • User
  • Page
• Profile Expires: The date and time when the profile's ID will expire. At that point in time, the library will automatically re-check that the profile's ID is still valid. Ensures that the library is always using the most up-to-date profile ID, and that the current profile ID is cached for as long as possible.
• Profile Valid: Whether the profile's ID is still valid. Mainly for internal use.
• Page Index: The index of the page you're acting on behalf of. Only relevant for page profiles.
• Profile Token: The token used to authenticate with the profile.
  • User
  • Page
• Profile Token Expires: The date and time when the profile's token will expire. At that point in time, the library will automatically re-check that the profile's token is still valid. Ensures that the library is always using the most up-to-date profile token, and that the current profile token is cached for as long as possible.
• Profile Token Valid: Whether the profile's token is still valid. Mainly for internal use.

Users

The user profile is the personal profile of a user — the account that you use to login to Facebook. By passing in user as the profile, you'll be able to act on behalf of yourself.

While using a user profile is possible, it's not recommended, as publishing (a central function of the library) from user profiles has been deprecated. The only way to publish posts now is through a page profile.

Though you can no longer publish, edit, or delete posts from a user profile, Meta still allows a couple of very limited actions with the special user_posts permission. However, this permission requires manual approval from Meta, and is not available to everyone.

For more information about the breaking changes made to user profiles by Meta, see the Graph API changelog, and Meta's announcement post.

import Facebook from "bookface";
import type { Config } from "bookface";

const config: Config = { profile: "user" };
const facebook = new Facebook(config);

Pages

The page profile is the profile of one of your pages. Since pages are not created like personal profiles by default, you'll need to create a page first.

Once you've done that, you can pass in the page and index parameters to your client to specify which page you want to act on behalf of.

While page just specifies that you want to use a page in the first place, index specifies which page in your list of pages you want to act on behalf of.

This number starts from 0, and and counts up through your list of pages. For example, if you have 3 pages, the first page you create would have an index of, the second page would have an index of 1, the third an index of 2, and so on. Your pages here are sorted by when you first created them, and index just refers to the position of the page in that list.

import Facebook from "bookface";
import type { Config } from "bookface";

const config: Config = { profile: "page", pageIndex: 0 };
const facebook = new Facebook(config);