Comments

Note

You need to be authenticated before you can interact with comments. If you haven't set up authentication yet, check out the authentication guide.

Overview

Comments are replies to posts. They follow most of the same rules as posts, but unlike posts, comments cannot stand alone.

Before you can interact with comments, you'll need to have a post to interact with.

Note

If you're new, you probably want to read the posts guide first.

There are four main types of comments.

Text comments: Simple status updates with a message
Link comments: Comments that include a URL with automatic preview generation
Media comments: Comments with photos or videos
Scheduled comments: Comments that publish at a future date and time

Through the API, comments can be created, retrieved, edited, and deleted (where Meta's policies allow).

Profile Types

Page Comments

Page comments are the recommended approach for most applications. Since user posting is deprecated, commenting on behalf a page has become the only way to comment on posts. Unless all you want to do is read comments, you'll need to have a page setup with permissions.

If you don't already have a page setup with permissions, you can find out to create a page in the authentication guide.

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The following is a minimal, reproducible example of how to comment on a post you've created (on your page).

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

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

const post = await facebook.page.posts.publish({
  message: "This is a post."
});
const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: post.id,
  user: post.user,
  message: "This is a reply.",
});

User Comments

Important

User profile posting has been heavily restricted by Meta since April of 2018. Most commenting operations will throw errors.

You can read more about this in the accompanying blog post and out-of-cycle changelog.

User comments refer to comments on your personal profile. Unlike page comments, user comments can no longer be published, edited, or deleted. The only remaining functionality is reading existing comments.

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The following is a minimal, reproducible example of how to read comments on your user profile.

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

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

const comments = await facebook.user.comments.read();

Creating Comments

Creating comments is done using the publish method. Depending on what your trying to comment, you'll need to pass in the appropriate configuration object and have the right permissions.

Text Comments

The simplest type of comment is a text comment.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This is a text comment."
});

console.log({ comment });

Link Comments

Link comments are comments that refer to a URL.

Different from text posts, link posts automatically generate rich previews with the your link's title, description, and thumbnail.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This is a link post.",
  link: "https://developers.facebook.com"
});

You can also comment links without an additional message by doing the following.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  link: "https://github.com"
});

Media Comments

Media comments allow you to attach photos or videos.

Supported formats include JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This is a photo comment.",
  media: "/path/to/image.jpg"
});

const galleryComment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  message: "This is a gallery comment.",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  media: [
    "/path/to/photo1.jpg",
    "/path/to/photo2.png",
    "/path/to/photo3.gif"
  ]
});

You can also upload images with Base64 data by doing the following.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This post attaches a Base64 image.",
  media: {
    data: "iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAYAAAAfFcSJAAAADUlEQVR42mP8/5+hHgAHggJ/PchI7wAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==",
    type: "png"
  }
});

Scheduled Comments

Scheduled comments allow you to publish things at a future time and date.

Note

The scheduled time of your post must be at least 10 minutes in the future.

const tomorrow = new Date();
tomorrow.setDate(tomorrow.getDate() + 1);
tomorrow.setHours(9, 0, 0, 0);

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "Scheduled announcement",
  schedule: tomorrow
});

console.log("Post scheduled");
console.log({ scheduled: comment.scheduled });

You can also schedule other types of comments, like the ones defined above.

const scheduledLink = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This is a scheduled link post.",
  link: "https://example.com/newsletter",
  schedule: "2024-01-15T10:00:00Z"
});

const scheduledMedia = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This is a scheduled media post.",
  media: "/path/to/announcement.jpg",
  schedule: new Date("2024-01-20 14:30:00")
});

Checking Scheduled Comments

When you schedule a comment, you can check if the comment has been published yet using the ready() method.

const scheduledComment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  user: "10039207206110825",
  message: "Future announcement",
  schedule: new Date("2024-01-15T10:00:00Z")
});

console.log("Checking if post is published");
const isPublished = await scheduledComment.ready();
console.log({ published: isPublished });

Reading Comments

While posts and comments are similar, reading comments is a bit different.

Read All Comments

You can read all comments from a profile using the read method.

const pageComments = await facebook.page.comments.read();
console.log("Comments retrieved");
console.log({ count: pageComments.length });
console.log({ comments: pageComments });

Get Specific Comments

If you only want to read a single comment though, you can use the get method instead and specify the comment's ID.

While comment IDs can be useful, it's better practice to use comment objects whenever available, as IDs can be finnicky.

If you want to use a string ID anyways, note that comment IDs also usually require the user ID to specified in a "{user ID}_{post ID}" format.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.get({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
});

console.log({ comment });

To pass in an existing comment object (recommended), pass the object in directly or pass in the id property.

const existingComment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  message: "This is a comment."  
});

const retrievedComment = await facebook.page.comments.get(existingComment);
const idRetrievedComment = await facebook.page.comments.get({ id: existingComment.id });
console.log({ retrievedComment });

Editing Posts

Note

You can only edit text comments. Media, link, and scheduled comments cannot be modified after publishing.

To edit a text comment, pass in the comment's ID (or better yet, an existing comment object) and the new message.

const editedComment = await facebook.page.comments.edit({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  message: "This comment has been edited."
});

console.log("Comment updated");
console.log({ success: editedComment.success });

Deleting Posts

To delete a comment, pass in the comment's ID (or better yet, an existing comment object).

const result = await facebook.page.comments.remove({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
});

console.log("Comment deleted");
console.log({ success: result.success });

Comment Object

When you create, read, or modify comments, you'll automatically get back a Comment object. This is useful because it provides direct methods for interacting with your comment.

Comment objects also contain properties like id, message, created, media, link, success, and scheduled — these are useful for gathering information about a comment.

You can find the full list of properties/methods for comments in the API reference.

The following is a minimal, reproducible example of how to use a comment object.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  post: "122172395366285076",
  id: "10039207206110825",
  message: "This is a comment.",
});

console.log("Comment properties");
console.log({
  id: comment.id,
  message: comment.message,
  created: comment.created,
  scheduled: comment.scheduled
});

Replying

A special property on comment objects is the reply method. This method allows you to comment on a comment.

const reply = await facebook.page.comments.reply({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  message: "This is a reply."
});
console.log({ reply });

Like with scheduled comments, you can also comment reply with links and media.

const linkReply = await facebook.page.comments.reply({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  message: "This is a reply.",
  link: "https://example.com/newsletter"
});
console.log({ linkReply });

const mediaReply = await facebook.page.comments.reply({
  id: "1446136966366636",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  message: "This is a reply.",
  media: "/path/to/image.jpg"
});
console.log({ mediaReply });

Comment Dumps (JSON)

If you need to get a raw JSON representation of a comment, you can use the dump method.

const comment = await facebook.page.comments.publish({
  id: "10039207206110825",
  post: "122172395366285076",
  message: "This is a comment.",
});

const details = comment.dump();
console.log({ details });