Question

For an application I am developing, we allow users to add a link to their Facebook Page (strictly page, not Profile, not Group, only a Page).

I cannot find anything about validating whether the URL I received (server-side, PHP) is actually a valid Page URL.

Even better if I can get the “true” URL information, i.e. minus the #! if there is one. I can manage this with some parsing but I’d rather Facebook tell me.

Answer 1

I have the similar task, first I ask Facebook for normalized URL (without !#, etc):

require_once('facebook.php');
function getNormalized($anylink){
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
    'appId'  => 'yourapplicationID',
    'secret' => 'yoursecretcode',
    'cookie' => true,
));
$res = $facebook->api(array(
    'method' => 'fql.query',
    'query' => 'select url, normalized_url from link_stat where url = "'.$anylink.'" ;'
));
        if (!isset($res[0]['normalized_url']))
        {
        //If not isset -> set with dumy value, example
        echo '<br>You have not entered Facebook Page URL or its not accessible. Please go back and try again.';
        exit;
        } 

return $res;    
}