3. Facebook API Binding

Spring Social Facebook's Facebook interface and its implementation, FacebookTemplate provide the operations needed to interact with Facebook on behalf of a user. Creating an instance of FacebookTemplate is as simple as constructing it by passing in an authorized access token to the constructor:

String accessToken = "f8FX29g..."; // access token received from Facebook after OAuth authorization
Facebook facebook = new FacebookTemplate(accessToken);
	

In addition, FacebookTemplate has a default constructor that creates an instance without any OAuth credentials:

Facebook facebook = new FacebookTemplate();
	

When constructed with the default constructor, FacebookTemplate will allow a few simple operations that do not require authorization, such as retrieving a specific user's profile. Attempting other operations, such as posting a status update will fail with an MissingAuthorizationException being thrown.

If you are using Spring Social's service provider framework, you can get an instance of Facebook from a Connection. For example, the following snippet calls getApi() on a connection to retrieve a Facebook:

Connection<Facebook> connection = connectionRepository.findPrimaryConnection(Facebook.class);
Facebook facebook = connection != null ? connection.getApi() : new FacebookTemplate();
	

Here, ConnectionRepository is being asked for the primary connection that the current user has with Facebook. If a connection to Facebook is found, a call to getApi() retrieves a Facebook instance that is configured with the connection details received when the connection was first established. If there is no connection, a default instance of FacebookTemplate is created.

With a Facebook in hand, there are several ways you can use it to interact with Facebook on behalf of the user. Spring Social's Facebook API binding is divided into 9 sub-APIs exposes through the methods of Facebook:

public interface Facebook extends GraphApi {

    CommentOperations commentOperations();

    EventOperations eventOperations();
	
    FeedOperations feedOperations();

    FriendOperations friendOperations();
	
    GroupOperations groupOperations();

    LikeOperations likeOperations();
	
    MediaOperations mediaOperations();
	
    PlacesOperations placesOperations();
	
    UserOperations userOperations();
	
}
	

The sub-API interfaces returned from Facebook's methods are described in Table 3.1, “Facebook's Sub-APIs”.

Table 3.1. Facebook's Sub-APIs

Sub-API InterfaceDescription
CommentOperationsAdd, delete, and read comments on Facebook objects.
EventOperationsCreate and maintain events and RSVP to event invitations.
FeedOperationsRead and post to a Facebook wall.
FriendOperationsRetrieve a user's friends and maintain friend lists.
GroupOperationsRetrieve group details and members.
LikeOperationsRetrieve a user's interests and likes. Like and unlike objects.
MediaOperationsMaintain albums, photos, and videos.
PlacesOperationsCheckin to location in Facebook Places and retrieve places a user and their friends have checked into.
UserOperationsRetrieve user profile data and profile images.

The following sections will give an overview of common tasks that can be performed via Facebook and its sub-APIs. For complete details on all of the operations available, refer to the JavaDoc.

3.1 Retrieving a user's profile data

You can retrieve a user's Facebook profile data using Facebook' getUserProfile() method:

FacebookProfile profile = facebook.userOperations().getUserProfile();
	

The FacebookProfile object will contain basic profile information about the authenticating user, including their first and last name and their Facebook ID. Depending on what authorization scope has been granted to the application, it may also include additional details about the user such as their email address, birthday, hometown, and religious and political affiliations. For example, getBirthday() will return the current user's birthday if the application has been granted "user_birthday" permission; null otherwise. Consult the JavaDoc for FacebookProfile for details on which permissions are required for each property.

If all you need is the user's Facebook ID, you can call getProfileId() instead:

String profileId = facebook.userOperations().getProfileId();
	

Or if you want the user's Facebook URL, you can call getProfileUrl():

String profileUrl = facebook.userOperations().getProfileUrl();
	

3.2 Getting a user's Facebook friends

An essential feature of Facebook and other social networks is creating a network of friends or contacts. You can access the user's list of Facebook friends by calling the getFriendIds() method from FriendOperations:

List<String> friendIds = facebook.friendOperations().getFriendIds();
		

This returns a list of Facebook IDs belonging to the current user's list of friends. This is just a list of String IDs, so to retrieve an individual user's profile data, you can turn around and call the getUserProfile(), passing in one of those IDs to retrieve the profile data for an individual user:

FacebookProfile firstFriend = facebook.userOperations().getUserProfile(friendIds.get(0));
		

Or you can get a list of user's friends as FacebookProfiles by calling getFriendProfiles():

List<FacebookProfile> friends = facebook.friendOperations().getFriendProfiles();
		

Facebook also enables users to organize their friends into friend lists. To retrieve a list of the authenticating user's friend lists, call getFriendLists() with no arguments:

List<Reference> friends = facebook.friendOperations().getFriendLists();
		

You can also retrieve a list of friend lists for a specific user by passing the user ID (or an alias) to getFriendLists():

List<Reference> friends = facebook.friendOperations().getFriendLists("habuma");
		

getFriendLists() returns a list of Reference objects that carry the ID and name of each friend list.

To retieve a list of friends who are members of a specific friend list call getFriendListMembers(), passing in the ID of the friend list:

List<Reference> friends = facebook.friendOperations().getFriendListMembers("193839228");
		

FriendOperations also support management of friend lists. For example, the createFriendList() method will create a new friend list for the user:

Reference collegeFriends = facebook.friendOperations().createFriendList("College Buddies");
		

createFriendList() returns a Reference to the newly created friend list.

To add a friend to the friend list, call addToFriendList():

facebook.friendOperations().addToFriendList(collegeFriends.getId(), "527631174");
		

addToFriendList() takes two arguments: The ID of the friend list and the ID (or alias) of a friend to add to the list.

In a similar fashion, you may remove a friend from a list by calling removeFromFriendList():

facebook.friendOperations().removeFromFriendList(collegeFriends.getId(), "527631174");
		

3.3 Posting to and reading feeds

To post a message to the user's Facebook wall, call FeedOperations' updateStatus() method, passing in the message to be posted:

facebook.feedOperations().updateStatus("I'm trying out Spring Social!");
		

If you'd like to attach a link to the status message, you can do so by passing in a FacebookLink object along with the message:

FacebookLink link = new FacebookLink("http://www.springsource.org/spring-social", 
        "Spring Social", 
        "The Spring Social Project", 
        "Spring Social is an extension to Spring to enable applications to connect with service providers.");
facebook.feedOperations().updateStatus("I'm trying out Spring Social!", link);
		

When constructing the FacebookLink object, the first parameter is the link's URL, the second parameter is the name of the link, the third parameter is a caption, and the fourth is a description of the link.

If you want to read posts from a user's feed, FeedOperations has several methods to choose from. The getFeed() method retrieves recent posts to a user's wall. When called with no parameters, it retrieves posts from the authenticating user's wall:

List<Post> feed = facebook.feedOperations().getFeed();
		

Or you can read a specific user's wall by passing their Facebook ID to getFeed():

List<Post> feed = facebook.feedOperations().getFeed("habuma");
		

In any event, the getFeed() method returns a list of Post objects. The Post class has six subtypes to represent different kinds of posts:

  • CheckinPost - Reports a user's checkin in Facebook Places.

  • LinkPost - Shares a link the user has posted.

  • NotePost - Publicizes a note that the user has written.

  • PhotoPost - Announces a photo that the user has uploaded.

  • StatusPost - A simple status.

  • VideoPost - Announces a video that the user has uploaded.

The Post's getType() method identifies the type of Post.