Question

Using the new Facebook SDK 3.1 and iOS 6 there are 2 (actually 3) ways to post.

(Seems the new trend is to have more options to make it more simple??) OMG!!

Here is one:

SLComposeViewController *fbPost = [SLComposeViewController      composeViewControllerForServiceType:SLServiceTypeFacebook];
[fbPost addURL:[NSURL URLWithString:href]];
[self presentViewController:fbPost animated:YES completion:nil];

And this is another way using native dialogs:

[FBNativeDialogs presentShareDialogModallyFrom:self
 initialText: nil
 image: nil
 url: [NSURL URLWithString:href]
 handler:^(FBNativeDialogResult result, NSError *error) {

     if (error) {

     }
     else
     {

         switch (result) {
             case FBNativeDialogResultSucceeded:

                 break;
             case FBNativeDialogResultCancelled:

                 break;
             case FBNativeDialogResultError:

                 break;
        }

     }

 }];

We, developers, think this is cool because we give a nice functionality to the user and also because our app name appears in the post and that can make some promotion of the app.

The funny thing is that latest implementations are not allowing to specify the app name was posting, the name appears after ‘via’.

I tried aswell using SLRequest:

ACAccountStore *store = [[ACAccountStore alloc] init];

ACAccountType *fbType = [store accountTypeWithAccountTypeIdentifier:ACAccountTypeIdentifierFacebook];

NSMutableDictionary *options = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
(options)[@"ACFacebookAppIdKey"] = kFacebookAppID;
(options)[@"ACFacebookPermissionsKey"] = @[@"publish_stream"];
(options)[@"ACFacebookAudienceKey"] = ACFacebookAudienceFriends;


[store requestAccessToAccountsWithType:fbType options:options completion:^(BOOL granted, NSError *error) {
    if(granted) {
        // Get the list of Twitter accounts.
        NSArray *fbAccounts = [store accountsWithAccountType:fbType];

        NSMutableDictionary *params = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];

        (params)[@"link"] = href;
//            (params)[@"picture"] = picture;
//            (params)[@"name"] = name;
        (params)[@"actions"] = @"{\"name\": \"Go Gabi\", \"link\": \"http://www.gogogabi.com\"}";

        //Set twitter API call
        SLRequest *postRequest = [SLRequest requestForServiceType:SLServiceTypeFacebook requestMethod:SLRequestMethodPOST
                                                              URL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed"] parameters:params];
        //Set account


        [postRequest setAccount: [fbAccounts lastObject]];
        [postRequest performRequestWithHandler:^(NSData *responseData, NSHTTPURLResponse *urlResponse, NSError *error) {

            if(error)
            {
                NSLog(@"%@", error.description);
            }
            else
            {
                NSLog(@"%@", [[NSString alloc] initWithData:responseData encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]);

            }

        }];

    } else {


    }
}];

Unfortunatelly to share that name is not so trivial anymore, I wonder why and who was designing the new implementation…
I would appreciate to get some help on that, thanks in advance.

I try to make my questions funny because is soo boring spend time in so trivial topics…

Answer 1

When you use the SLComposeViewController, it’s actually the system presenting to you their controller, and it’s the user who sends using the post button. Therefore on Facebook it appears as “via iOS”.

There’s no way to change that.

Using the Facebook SDK 3.1, under the hood it is also using the iOS 6 native integration, so when you’re calling the FBNativeDialogs, on iOS 6, it’s using SLComposeViewController.

Facebook continued to develop their SDK because they provide a couple of nice modules to use “out of the box” – this includes friends list selector etc… But I believe the biggest reason for Facebook to continue supporting their SDK it for backward compatibility. Under the hood if you’re not on iOS 6, it falls back to it’s library, and if you are on iOS 6, it uses the system integration.

Facebook is a big thing, and now it’s natively available a lot of developers will be using it, just like Twitter’s integration last year. The problem of course is at that point the developer has the option to drop older iOS support, or… have a lot of duplicate code, in the sense that they will check for SLComposeViewController and if it’s not available (iOS 5) then use the old Facebook SDK… You can imagine how this would become very messy very quickly.

So, the Facebook SDK (3.1) is using iOS system Facebook integration if available, or if not, it’s own. In a nutshell, unless you really want the Facebook SDK goodies (friend picket to name one), and you’re not planning on supporting iOS < 6 then you don’t need to worry about their SDK, just use the Social framework.

So, back to your question, there are 3 ways to post to Facebook ? Actually taking into consideration what I mentioned, there are 2 ways in iOS 6: SLComposeViewController or, SLRequest. On older iOS versions, only 1: Facebook SDK.

Since the SLComposeViewController is owned by the system, not your app, it will always share as “via iOS”.

On the other hand SLRequest will show your apps name. When you specify an account for your SLRequest, that account was acquired via the ACAccountStore as a result of passing in some options including ACFacebookAppIdKey, which will be used to determine your Facebook apps name to post onto the users feed as part of the post.

Hope this helps.