Question

So I have been playing around with the facebook like button but I have run into a problem. I have a facebook page about some charity work I’m doing here:

http://www.facebook.com/Adam.Holmes.Climbs.Kilimanjaro.

I also have a web page that has pretty much the same information on it. Within this web page I have a facebook like button so that users can like the page as seen here:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/.

Now my issue is with a seperate button. Within the facebook page I have added images of which some users have “liked” and commented etc. I have now placed those same images on my web page where I would like to add a facebook like button for each image and hence displaying all the likes that the image has on facebook. I have plugged many different links into the like button but none of them seem to work. I have tried a) the url of the page. b) the url of the image. c) random bits and bats manipulating different url’s.

I attempted to look through the javascript source code but it is much too complicated for my understanding. I know that a function fc_click() is called from the button which further calls another function, and not long after that I get lost, and have not found what url is used.

So I guess my question is, what is the url to be placed in the “like” script so that I can use the like button externally to facebook?

If anymore info is needed, please say so.

Thank you very much 🙂

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UPDATE: I have been trying all different combination’s or URL’s and still having no luck. The object for one of the “Like” buttons is an object in the graph i.e. Here is the object I want to like. but none of these links are working. Maybe facebook are restricting this as it is simple to use the url of the page and it works fine, just not individual items.

May I add again that I need the link that is to be placed in the tag and not just to be able to retrieve a count of the likes and comments etc. I also started a topic on the facebook developer forums here but no-one has replied with a solution.

Thanks again.

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UPDATE 2:
As pointed out by “Myles Gray” the code is actually rendered in the HTML as:

<label onclick="this.form.like.click();">

I’m not sure if there is a way to access the form from an external page since is wouldn’t have the correct this reference. Is anybody able to shed some light on whether this can be done, and if so, how? Surely if this can be done, having the correct reference to this would allow me to like content externally.

Answer 1

I’m afraid what do you want is not possible. A quick “evidence“:

<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="http://www.facebook.com/platform" show_faces="true" width="450"></fb:like>

This would work just fine, but using its Graph API interpretation:

<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"></script>
<fb:like href="https://graph.facebook.com/19292868552" show_faces="true" width="450"></fb:like>

This won’t work!

I don’t think you should bother searching for a “workaround/hack” or trying to inspect and debug the photo page on facebook, because EVEN if you did find a way to use their like functionality externally I’m pretty sure that would get you into legal issues with Facebook!

Now what I would do is, monitoring when the user “likes” a photo on your website and have a pop-up or a DIV under the LIKE button to encourage him to go the photo page in Facebook to support it (like it) there too!

This can be done by using the edge.create event:

FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) {
  // Encourage the user to support your cause in Facebook too!
  $("div_with_a_link_to_the_photo_page_on_facebook").show();

  // or using a dialog or whatever effect you like
  $("#facebook_support").dialog();
});

P.S: I’m using jQuery here

Also to actually like facebook “objects” externally you need an application and something like my answer here, but I think you don’t want to do that.