Question

I’m adding share functionalities to my iOS app (I have to support down to iOS 4.3). In the Facebook case, the behavior I want to implement is:

if the facebook app is present on the iDevice
then open it and go to share view with everything already pre-filled

else
open http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?%5Betc%5D in safari (or whatever browser) to share my page.

I wrote this :

    NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"fb://publish/profile/me?text=%@", facebookShareLink]];

    if([[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:url]) {

        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];

    } else {

        NSString *facebookLink = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=%@&t=%@", facebookShareLink, titleToShare];
        facebookLink = [facebookLink stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:facebookLink]];
    }

When the Facebook app is NOT installed it works pretty well but when it’s installed then it opens but it won’t go to the share view.

I read somewhere that the URL schemes are not supported anymore (I don’t have the source). Is that true?

Then is there still a way to do this without integrating the Facebook iOS SDK? I don’t want to add this SDK, I just need the sharing functionality not all the Graph stuff.

EDIT:
I don’t want my app to share itself sth on a social media but to prompt the user and give him the ability to do it himself easily. I think I shouldn’t have to authenticate with a Facebook app or a Twitter app in order to do that, should I? The user will authenticate himself in the app or on the mobile website.

Answer 1

I finally made a solution using the iOS built-in facebook share dialog (SLComposeViewController) that falls back on the website if the user is not using iOS 6

NSString *facebookShareLink = @"some link to share";
NSString *titleToShare = @"some title";

// if we're not on iOS 6, SLComposeViewController won't be available. Then fallback on website.
Class composeViewControllerClass = [SLComposeViewController class];

if(composeViewControllerClass == nil || ![composeViewControllerClass isAvailableForServiceType:SLServiceTypeFacebook]) {

    NSString *facebookLink = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=%@&t=%@", facebookShareLink, titleToShare];
    facebookLink = [facebookLink stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:facebookLink]];

} else {

    SLComposeViewController *composeViewController = [composeViewControllerClass composeViewControllerForServiceType:SLServiceTypeFacebook];
    [composeViewController setInitialText:titleToShare];
    [composeViewController addURL:[NSURL URLWithString:facebookShareLink]];

    [parentController presentModalViewController:composeViewController animated:YES];
}