Question

I would like to know if the only way, in which we can display things in the facebook timeline is by pushing those to facebook. Is there a way in which the items to be displayed could be queried just right before displaying the aggregation.

As an example, let’s assume I want to post suggestions for recipes in the timeline of the user. Is the only way to do this, to post an open graph action to facebook, or is there some way, in which facebook could ask my website what the suggested recipes are:

• Timeline of a fb user is opened
• Request to my site is sent for the suggested recipes

• my site responds with a json object

  suggestions: [
      {name: "Risotto", img: ..., link: ...},
      {name: "Pasta", img: ..., link: ...},
      ...
  ]
  

• The above information is displayed in the facebook timeline

Answer 1

I’m not really sure what you’re trying to accomplish here. Timeline Apps and related custom Open Graph actions and objects are to be used to accurately and honestly describe actions that the user (whose Timeline it is) has taken in apps. So, taking your recipe idea, the app involved should only publish stories similar to these:

• Recipes suggestions created by the user
• The users favourite recipes
• The users favourite ingredients

You can see here how this relates specifically to things that the user has done. This means that it is not reasonable that the content of the Timeline posts should change.