I am trying to submit an inbuilt Facebook Open Graph Action called “Watch”, however I keep getting an error with the Facebook Testing Account User and can’t figure out why Facebook is rejecting their own “action” and from their own “test user”?
According to Facebook you can’t submit their inbuilt Facebook actions without using a test user account:
Built-in Action Types require that you provide instructions for using your app's Open Graph integration as your Open Graph Test User in a functioning test environment. Failure to provide a functioning test environment will result in rejection of your Action Type.
I have two test accounts and selected the button to “Enable Ticker”, but still when I use the test user account to post to a users timeline/ticker I get this error:
statusCode: 500
headers: { 'access-control-allow-origin': '*',
'cache-control': 'no-store',
'content-type': 'text/javascript; charset=UTF-8',
expires: 'Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT',
pragma: 'no-cache',
'www-authenticate': 'OAuth "Facebook Platform" "unknown_error" "An unexpected error has occurred. Please retry your request later."',
'x-fb-rev': '645172',
'x-fb-debug': 'YwWqAJLmmVbUhG20kfBzoFaX8vlQ/BH25Xzh3CnakOk=',
date: 'Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:31:40 GMT',
connection: 'keep-alive',
'content-length': '123' }
and this is what I am posting:
{"host":"graph.facebook.com","port":"443","path":"/me/video.watches?access_token=AAAClql9ZBqlMBAExxkqIGs08NBFJ9FKVfEhQmc5C1ZCBZALgPPsVbMuaOXXsYRaAavX2AsjUWZB2IYTkXm8cyjHAJJqNypbZBKPUlnr5FugZDZD&video=https%3A%2F%2Fpazooza.azurewebsites.net%2FpazoozaVideo%3FogType%3Dfacebook%26id%3D0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000999999999999999999_0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000999999999999999991","method":"POST"}
The silly thing about this is that it works on normal (real users) accounts but not with Facebook’s own test accounts. Anyone know what they think the problem could be? Is there something else I need to enable with these test accounts to get them using actions ?
Cheers
UPDATE: I have also checked the permissions = {“data”:[{“installed”:1,”publish_actions”:1,”user_videos”:1,”bookmarked”:1}]};
So the permissions aren’t the problem. I have deleted the test user and recreated another one but still no luck…
The problem was two-fold:
1) Facebook’s Submit Action Process has limitations in terms that the testers that test the action don’t give you much feedback with respect to “why they did not approve your action”. They just give you links to documentation and your suppose to workout from that why your action isn’t working with their test user accounts. The other part to this story is that the FB testers that test your action create “new” test user accounts, irrespective of the test user accounts you’ve created and they use them. They have a name such as “Auth Preview User”.
2) The cause of the problem was to do with a request I was making with all Facebook Users who try to sign up and use my app. I was calling the graph api to extend the access token for each user effectively up to 60 days (maximum allowable for FB apps). However these “new” test user accounts being created by the FB testers seemed to exhibit odd behavior and had a life-time of only 2 hours. Whenever I would try to extend one of these accounts I’d get an error. But on the second request (e.g. if I stayed within my Canvas App and just clicked another link) Facebook would post the same user back to me but with a new access_token and expiry date for that access_token? This new token had a much longer expiry date a couple of hundred years I think. So I just stored that over the top of the old one and eliminated the error for my logic. Obviously I don’t know why FB does this but meh! what a doozey!
In either case I think I have learned that whenever your submitting your actions to FB put as much information at the beginning of the instructions you send them to replicate your action. I was saying stuff like:
(I have tested this action with All 3 Preview Test User accounts you guys created, and each have a sample video uploaded, what error are you receiving?)
HTH