Question

I want to insert an entry to the new facebook timeline with a specific date (e.g., February 10, 2008), but not manually. I want to be able to do this using either the graph api or the new open-graph-beta. Is there a specific api call that can do this, or is there some other way.

Update:

I have figured out that in the api call you need to specify the start_time and end_time parameters as seen in the snippet below:

  FB.api('me/APP_NAMESPACE:ACTION?\
    start_time=904920127&\
    expires_in=905006527&\
    OBJECT_TYPE=URL&\
    access_token=YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN', 'post', function (response) {
      if (!response || response.error) {
        console.log(response);
      } else {
        alert('Post was successful! Action ID: ' + response.id);
        console.log(response)
      }
  });

However the problem with this is that it just adds a specific year to your timeline and doesn’t really add an entry to that particular timeline, i.e., when I click on the particular year I just created in my timeline app nothing shows up besides seeing the new year in my time line, in this case it’s 1998.

Answer 1

When you post an action via the Graph API, you can set ‘start_time’ and ‘end_time’ parameters.

This tells Facebook when the action occurred – and is useful for both backloading historical actions from a long time ago, or delayed actions like publishing offline listening activity.

Facebook represents actions on the timeline in the time period in which they occurred. Setting start_time in the past will make the activity appear in the past on their timeline.

Note that its against policy to publish ‘fake’ past actions – you must only publish actions that the user actually did in the past.