Facebook Feed Dialog

The Facebook Feed Dialog prompts a user to publish an individual story to a profile’s feed. This does not require any extended permissions. Every dialog has a method name and parameters. The URL to a dialog always starts with

http://www.facebook.com/dialog/

followed by the name of the dialog and parameters.

To ask a user to post a story to their Wall, the Feed Dialog with required parameters is used :

http://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?parameters

The following parameters are available :

  • app_id : required application’s identifier
  • redirect_uri : required URL to redirect to after the user clicks a button
  • from : optional ID or username
  • to : optional ID or username
  • message : optional (see Facebook policies) text to prefill the data field that the user will type in
  • link : link attachment
  • picture : url of picture
  • source : url of media file; if specified, picture will be ignored
  • name : name of the link
  • caption : caption of the link; will appear beneath the name
  • description : description of the link; will appear beneath the capation
  • properties : several JSON objects of key/value pairs; will appear in the post beneath the description; key=string; value=string or JSON object with keys text and href
  • actions : one JSON object with keys name and link; will appear next to the “Comment” and “Like” link under posts

To integrate a Facebook dialog in a webpage, the URL can be constructed on the server or client side. Helper methods are available in the form of Javascript, iOS and Android SDK’s. A Javascript Test Console is available to debug common methods. The tag ?ref=nf is added by the Facebook platform to the links.

Please visit My favorite artist at Leslie’s Artgallery to see a working example of a Facebook dialog.