Question

When adding a link post in Facebook, a nice looking description (containing a snippet of text from the linked page) and thumbnail are automatically added to the post.

Is there a way to do this automatically using the Facebook API? I am inclined to think that there is not, because posts added by IFTTT, a popular web application that uses the Facebook API, do not contain descriptions. I am unclear as to whether this is a limitation with the Facebook API, and whether there is any way around it.

Answer 1

Yes, it’s possible. You can use the Graph Api Method /profile_id/feed. The method receives the arguments message, picture, link, name, caption, description, source, place and tags. The facebook organize the parameters in a “nice looking summary and thumbnail”.

You can get more information in the publishing section in the link http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/

In c#:

        public static bool Share(string oauth_token, string message, string name, string link, string picture)
        {
            try
            {
                string url =
                    "https://graph.facebook.com/me/feed" +
                    "?access_token=" + oauth_token;

                StringBuilder post = new StringBuilder();
                post.AppendFormat("message={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(message));
                post.AppendFormat("&name={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(name));
                post.AppendFormat("&link={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(link));
                post.AppendFormat("&picture={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(picture));

                string result = Post(url, post.ToString());
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                return false;
            }

            return true;
        }

        private static string Post(string url, string post)
        {
            WebRequest webRequest = WebRequest.Create(url);
            webRequest.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
            webRequest.Method = "POST";

            byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(post);

            webRequest.ContentLength = bytes.Length;

            Stream stream = webRequest.GetRequestStream();
            stream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
            stream.Close();

            WebResponse webResponse = webRequest.GetResponse();

            StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(webResponse.GetResponseStream());

            return streamReader.ReadToEnd();
        }

UPDATE:

Open graph protocol meta tags: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraphprotocol/