Question

Bear with me, I know access_token questions have been asked a thousand times but I can’t seem to find an answer to this specific question.

Is there an expiration date for Facebook Page (not app, not user) access tokens?

I know that:

• offline_access has been deprecated.
• I can request a 60-day user access_token

Step 1: I use Facebook Connect and I get a user access_token which has the manage_pages permission (by default, this token expires in 2 hours, extendable to 60 days)

Step 2: I then call /me/accounts and get an array of the user’s pages each one with a listed page access_token

Step 3: I can use the page access_token in subsequent API calls to do things like posting to the user’s page.

I need users to be able to schedule page updates to happen in the future (when they will not be online).

So again the question is:

• What is the expiration date of the page access_token returned from /me/accounts?

If the expiration date is tied to something, what is it tied to?

• Expiration date of the user access_token used when requesting /me/accounts?
• 60-days from when the request is made to /me/accounts?

I apologize for my confusion, the Facebook documentation seems to fall extremely short in describing these access tokens.

Answer 1

I just created a brand new app. Ensured the deprecate offline access was enabled. Went to explorer, found my new app in the dropdown, granted myself manage_pages, went to me/accounts grabbed one of the page access tokens, and then linted it. Whew! 1 hour expiration.

EDIT

I tried exchanging that 1 hour page token and I got an error from fb.

I went back to the user access token, and exchanged it for a 60 day one. Verified in the linter that it was a 60 day. Went back to me/accounts and grabbed one of the page access tokens and linted it. Suprise! Got a 60 day token from there.

So the moral of the story is, you cannot exchange page tokens, only user tokens. But with a 60 day user token you can get a 60 day page token. 🙂