Facebook Graph API - upload photo using JavaScript

Question

Is it possible to upload a file using the Facebook Graph API using javascript, I feel like I'm close. I'm using the following JavaScript

var params = {};
params['message'] = 'PicRolled';
params['source'] = '@'+path;
params['access_token'] = access_token;
params['upload file'] = true;

function saveImage() {
    FB.api('/me/photos', 'post', params, function(response) {
        if (!response || response.error) {
            alert(response);
        } else {
            alert('Published to stream - you might want to delete it now!');
        }
    }); 
}

Upon running this I receive the following error...

"OAuthException" - "(#324) Requires upload file"

When I try and research this method all I can find out about is a php method that apears to solve this

$facebook->setFileUploadSupport(true);

However, I am using JavaScript, it looks like this method might be to do with Facebook Graph permissions, but I already have set the permissions user_photos and publish_stream, which I believed are the only ones I should need to perform this operation.

I have seen a couple of unanswered questions regarding this on stackoverflow, hopefully I can explained myself enough. Thanks guys.

Answer 1

Yes, this is possible, i find 2 solutions how to do that and they are very similar to each other, u need just define url parameter to external image url

FIRST one using Javascript SDk:

var imgURL="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3332/3451193407_b7f047f4b4_o.jpg";//change with your external photo url
FB.api('/album_id/photos', 'post', {
    message:'photo description',
    url:imgURL        
}, function(response){

    if (!response || response.error) {
        alert('Error occured');
    } else {
        alert('Post ID: ' + response.id);
    }

});

and SECOND one using jQuery Post request and FormData:

 var postMSG="Your message";
 var url='https://graph.facebook.com/albumID/photos?access_token='+accessToken+"&message="+postMSG;
 var imgURL="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3332/3451193407_b7f047f4b4_o.jpg";//change with your external photo url
 var formData = new FormData();
 formData.append("url",imgURL);

  $.ajax({
                    url: url,
                    data: formData,
                    cache: false,
                    contentType: false,
                    processData: false,
                    type: 'POST',

                    success: function(data){
                        alert("POST SUCCESSFUL");
                    }
                });

Answer 2

EDIT: this answer is (now) largely irrelevant. If your image is on the web, just specify the url param as per the API (and see examples in other answers). If you would like to POST the image content to facebook directly, you may want to read this answer to gain understanding. Also see HTML5's Canvas.toDataUrl().

The API says: "To publish a photo, issue a POST request with the photo file attachment as multipart/form-data."

FB is expecting that the bytes of the image to be uploaded are in the body of the HTTP request, but they're not there. Or to look at it another way - where in the FB.api() call are you supplying the actual contents of the image itself?

The FB.api() API is poorly documented, and doesn't supply an example of an HTTP POST which includes a body. One might infer from the absence of such an example that it doesn't support this.

That's probably OK - FB.api() is using something called XmlHttpRequest under the covers which does support including a body ... look it up in your favourite JavaScript reference.

However, you'll still have 2 sub-problems to solve:

1. how to prepare the image bytes (and rest of the request) as multipart/form-data; and
2. getting the bytes of the image itself

(incidentally, the need to encode the message body is probably what the PHP setFileUploadSupport(true) method is for - tell the facebook object to encode the message body as multipart/form-data before sending)

But it's a bit meessier than that

Unfortunately, sub-problem '2' may bite you - there is no way (last time I looked) to extract the bytes of an image from the browser-supplied Image object.

If the image to be uploaded is accessible via a URL, you could fetch the bytes with XmlHttpRequest. Not too bad.

If the image is coming from the user's desktop, your probable recourse is to offer the user a:

 <form enctype="multipart/form-data">
     <input type="filename" name="myfile.jpg" />
     <input type="hidden" name="source" value="@myfile.jpg"/>
     <input type="hidden" name="message" value="My Message"/>
     <input type="hidden" name="access_token" value="..."/> 
 </form> 

(notice that source references the name given to the file-upload widget)

... and hope that FB anticipated receiving the data in this manner (try it with a static HTML form first, before coding it up dynamically in JS). One might infer that in fact it would, since they don't offer another means of doing it.

Answer 3

i used @Владимир Дворник code with some modification, I had the same issue and with this code it worked very well:

        var imgURL = //your external photo url
        FB.api('/photos', 'post', {
            message: 'photo description',
            access_token: your accesstoken 
            url: imgURL
        }, function (response) {

            if (!response || response.error) {
                alert('Error occured:' + response);
            } else {
                alert('Post ID: ' + response.id);
            }

        });

Answer 4

Photos can be uploaded to facebook profile using Ajax as follows.

$.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "https://graph.facebook.com/me/photos",
            data: {
                message: "Your Msg Goes Here",
                url: "http://www.knoje.com/images/photo.jpg[Replace with yours]",
                access_token: token,
                format: "json"
            },
            success: function(data){
               alert("POST SUCCESSFUL"); }
            });

So this is the best way to post photo to a facebook profile with GRAPH API and is the simple one.

In many answer i have seen that image url is shwon by the source,picture or image etc but that doesn't works.

The use of of source,picture or image leads to a (#324) Requires upload file error .

Best way to avoid the 324 error.

Answer 5

Only @Thiago's answer is answering the question of uploading data via javascript. I've found that the Facebook JS API doesn't cover this situation.

I've also brew & tested my personl solution.

Main steps

1. Get the binary data of the image (I've used a canvas, but using an input box is possible as well)
2. Form a multipart request with all necesarry data for the graph API call
3. Include the binary data in the request
4. Encode everything in a binary array and send it so via XHR

Code

Conversion utilities

var conversions = {
  stringToBinaryArray: function(string) {
    return Array.prototype.map.call(string, function(c) {
      return c.charCodeAt(0) & 0xff;
    });
  },
  base64ToString: function(b64String) {
    return atob(b64String);
  }
};

Image posting snippet

var DEFAULT_CALL_OPTS = {
  url: 'https://graph.facebook.com/me/photos',
  type: 'POST',
  cache: false,
  success: function(response) {
    console.log(response);
  },
  error: function() {
    console.error(arguments);
  },
  // we compose the data manually, thus
  processData: false,
  /**
   *  Override the default send method to send the data in binary form
   */
  xhr: function() {
    var xhr = $.ajaxSettings.xhr();
    xhr.send = function(string) {
      var bytes = conversions.stringToBinaryArray(string);
      XMLHttpRequest.prototype.send.call(this, new Uint8Array(bytes).buffer);
    };
    return xhr;
  }
};
/**
 * It composes the multipart POST data, according to HTTP standards
 */
var composeMultipartData = function(fields, boundary) {
  var data = '';
  $.each(fields, function(key, value) {
    data += '--' + boundary + '\r\n';

    if (value.dataString) { // file upload
      data += 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\'' + key + '\'; ' +
        'filename=\'' + value.name + '\'\r\n';
      data += 'Content-Type: ' + value.type + '\r\n\r\n';
      data += value.dataString + '\r\n';
    } else {
      data += 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\'' + key + '\';' +
        '\r\n\r\n';
      data += value + '\r\n';
    }
  });
  data += '--' + boundary + '--';
  return data;
};

/**
 * It sets the multipart form data & contentType
 */
var setupData = function(callObj, opts) {
  // custom separator for the data
  var boundary = 'Awesome field separator ' + Math.random();

  // set the data
  callObj.data = composeMultipartData(opts.fb, boundary);

  // .. and content type
  callObj.contentType = 'multipart/form-data; boundary=' + boundary;
};

// the "public" method to be used
var postImage = function(opts) {

  // create the callObject by combining the defaults with the received ones
  var callObj = $.extend({}, DEFAULT_CALL_OPTS, opts.call);

  // append the access token to the url
  callObj.url += '?access_token=' + opts.fb.accessToken;

  // set the data to be sent in the post (callObj.data = *Magic*)
  setupData(callObj, opts);

  // POST the whole thing to the defined FB url
  $.ajax(callObj);
};

Usage

postImage({
  fb: { // data to be sent to FB
    caption: caption,
    /* place any other API params you wish to send. Ex: place / tags etc.*/
    accessToken: 'ACCESS_TOKEN',
    file: {
      name: 'your-file-name.jpg',
      type: 'image/jpeg', // or png
      dataString: image // the string containing the binary data
    }
  },
  call: { // options of the $.ajax call
    url: 'https://graph.facebook.com/me/photos', // or replace *me* with albumid
    success: successCallbackFunction,
    error: errorCallbackFunction
  }
});

Extra

Extracting the binary string representation of a canvas image

var getImageToBeSentToFacebook = function() {
  // get the reference to the canvas
  var canvas = $('.some-canvas')[0];

  // extract its contents as a jpeg image
  var data = canvas.toDataURL('image/jpeg');

  // strip the base64 "header"
  data = data.replace(/^data:image\/(png|jpe?g);base64,/, '');

  // convert the base64 string to string containing the binary data
  return conversions.base64ToString(data);
}

Information on how to load the binaryString from an input[type=file]

HTML5 File API read as text and binary

Notes:

1. There are of course alternative approaches as well
   • Using an HTML form in an iframe - you cannot get the response from the call
   • Using a FormData & File approach, but unfortunately in this case there are a lot of incompatilities which make the process harder to use, and you would end up duct-taping around the inconsistencies - thus my choice was manual data assembly since HTTP standards rarely change :)
2. The solution does not require any special HTML5 features.
3. The above example uses jQuery.ajax, jQuery.extend, jQuery.each

Answer 6

Yes, you can do this posting data to an iframe like here, or you can use jQuery File Upload . The problem is you can't get response from iframe, using plugin you can use a page handle.

Example: upload a video using jQuery File Upload

<form id="fileupload" action="https://graph-video.facebook.com/me/photos" method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input type="hidden" name="acess_token" value="user_acess_token">
    <input type="text" name="title">
    <input type="text" name="description">
    <input type="file" name="file"> <!-- name must be file -->
</form>


<script type="text/javascript">

    $('#fileupload').fileupload({
        dataType: 'json',
        forceIframeTransport: true, //force use iframe or will no work
        autoUpload : true,
        //facebook book response will be send as param
        //you can use this page to save video (Graph Api) object on database
        redirect : 'http://pathToYourServer?%s' 
    });
</script>

Answer 7

To upload a file from the local computer with just Javascript try HelloJS

<form onsubmit="upload();">
     <input type="file" name="file"/>
     <button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>

<script>
function upload(){
   hello.api("facebook:/me/photos", 'post', document.getElementById('form'), function(r){
      alert(r&&!r.error?'Success':'Failed'); 
   });
}
</script>

There's an upload demo at http://adodson.com/hello.js/demos/upload.html

Answer 8

https://stackoverflow.com/a/16439233/68210 contains a solution that works if you need to upload the photo data itself and don't have a url.

Answer 9

This still works. I am using it as below:

var formdata= new FormData();
if (postAs === 'page'){
    postTo = pageId; //post to page using pageID
}

formdata.append("access_token", accessToken); //append page access token if to post as page, uAuth|paAuth
formdata.append("message", photoDescription);
formdata.append("url", 'http://images/image.png');

try {
    $.ajax({
        url: 'https://graph.facebook.com/'+ postTo +'/photos',
        type: "POST",
        data: formdata,
        processData: false,
        contentType: false,
        cache: false,
        error: function (shr, status, data) {
            console.log("error " + data + " Status " + shr.status);
        },
        complete: function () {
            console.log("Successfully uploaded photo to Facebook");
        }
    });
} catch (e) {
    console.log(e);
}

I have to ask though if you people have any idea if this is advisable or has a big security risk compared to using PHP api for Facebook.

Answer 10

This works:

   function x(authToken, filename, mimeType, imageData, message) {
    // this is the multipart/form-data boundary we'll use
    var boundary = '----ThisIsTheBoundary1234567890';

    // let's encode our image file, which is contained in the var
    var formData = '--' + boundary + '\r\n';
    formData += 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="source"; filename="' + filename + '"\r\n';
    formData += 'Content-Type: ' + mimeType + '\r\n\r\n';
    for (var i = 0; i < imageData.length; ++i) {
        formData += String.fromCharCode(imageData[i] & 0xff);
    }
    formData += '\r\n';
    formData += '--' + boundary + '\r\n';
    formData += 'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="message"\r\n\r\n';
    formData += message + '\r\n';
    formData += '--' + boundary + '--\r\n';

    var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
    xhr.open('POST', 'https://graph.facebook.com/me/photos?access_token=' + authToken, true);
    xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary);

    // Solving problem with sendAsBinary for chrome
    try {
        if (typeof XMLHttpRequest.prototype.sendAsBinary == 'undefined') {
            XMLHttpRequest.prototype.sendAsBinary = function(text) {
                var data = new ArrayBuffer(text.length);
                var ui8a = new Uint8Array(data, 0);
                for (var i = 0; i < text.length; i++) ui8a[i] = (text.charCodeAt(i) & 0xff);
                this.send(ui8a);
            }
        }
    } catch (e) {}
    xhr.sendAsBinary(formData);
};

Answer 11

I seem to have a similar problem, but solutions above didn't work.

I was using the solution suggested by Arrabi (just use the url property only) to post images without any problem. My images are around 2-3 MB each.

When I migrated my app to another server (changing the absolute url of my images in the post) the method kept giving me 324 errors for images above around 100k size.

I thought it was due to some Apache setting on my end, but when I changed apache for lighttpd the problem was still there.

The connections from Facebook actually show up in my (apache) log:

69.171.234.7 - - [08/Jun/2012:11:35:54 +0200] "GET /images/cards/1337701633_518192458.png HTTP/1.1" 200 2676608 "-" "facebookplatform/1.0 (+http://developers.facebook.com)"

69.171.228.246 - - [08/Jun/2012:11:42:59 +0200] "GET /images/test5.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 457402 "-" "facebookplatform/1.0 (+http://developers.facebook.com)"

69.171.228.246 - - [08/Jun/2012:11:43:17 +0200] "GET /images/test4.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 312069 "-" "facebookplatform/1.0 (+http://developers.facebook.com)"

69.171.228.249 - - [08/Jun/2012:11:43:49 +0200] "GET /images/test2.png HTTP/1.1" 200 99538 "-" "facebookplatform/1.0 (+http://developers.facebook.com)"

69.171.228.244 - - [08/Jun/2012:11:42:31 +0200] "GET /images/test6.png HTTP/1.1" 200 727722 "-" "facebookplatform/1.0 (+http://developers.facebook.com)"

Only test2.png succeeded.

Answer 12

I use the following to share a photo (some BitmapData from the Phaser framework). It seems to work...

// Turn data URI to a blob ready for upload.
dataURItoBlob(dataURI:string): Blob {
    var byteString = atob(dataURI.split(',')[1]);
    var ab = new ArrayBuffer(byteString.length);
    var ia = new Uint8Array(ab);
    for (var i = 0; i < byteString.length; i++) {
        ia[i] = byteString.charCodeAt(i);
    }
    return new Blob([ab], { type: 'image/jpeg' });
}

// Share the given bitmapData as a photo on Facebook
sharePhoto(accessToken: string, photo: BitmapData, message: string): void {
    // Create form data, set up access_token, source and message
    var fd = new FormData();
    fd.append("access_token", accessToken);
    fd.append("source", this.dataURItoBlob(photo.canvas.toDataURL("image/jpeg")));
    fd.append("message", message);

    var request = new XMLHttpRequest();
    var thisPtr = this;
    request.onreadystatechange = function () {
        if (request.readyState == XMLHttpRequest.DONE) {
            var json = JSON.parse(request.responseText);
            if (json.hasOwnProperty("error")) {
                var error = json["error"];
                if (error.hasOwnProperty("type")) {
                    var errorType = error["type"];
                    if (errorType === "OAuthException") {
                        console.log("Need to request more permissions!");
                    }
                }
            }
        } else if (request.readyState == XMLHttpRequest.HEADERS_RECEIVED) {

        } else if (request.readyState == XMLHttpRequest.LOADING) {

        } else if (request.readyState == XMLHttpRequest.OPENED) {

        } else if (request.readyState == XMLHttpRequest.UNSENT) {

        }
    }
    request.open("POST", "https://graph.facebook.com/me/photos", true);
    request.send(fd);
}

Answer 13

In case anyone still looking for how to upload directly from canvas to Facebook photos, this works for me:

function postImageToFacebook(token, imageData, message, successCallback, errorCallback) {
  var fd = new FormData();
  fd.append("access_token", token);
  fd.append("source", imageData);
  fd.append("caption", message);

  $.ajax({
      url: "https://graph.facebook.com/me/photos?access_token=" + token,
      type: "POST",
      data: fd,
      processData: false,
      contentType: false,
      cache: false,
      success: function (data) {
        successCallback(data);
      },
      error: function (shr, status, data) {
        errorCallback(data);
      },
      complete: function (data) {
        console.log('Completed');
      }
  });
}

function dataURItoBlob(dataURI) {
  var byteString = atob(dataURI.split(',')[1]);
  var ab = new ArrayBuffer(byteString.length);
  var ia = new Uint8Array(ab);
  for (var i = 0; i < byteString.length; i++) {
      ia[i] = byteString.charCodeAt(i);
  }
  return new Blob([ab], {type: 'image/jpeg'});
}

To use it

// *IMPORTANT*
var FBLoginScope = 'publish_actions'; // or sth like 'user_photos,publish_actions' if you also use other scopes.

var caption = "Hello Facebook!";
var successCallback = ...;
var errorCallback = ...;

var data = $('#your_canvas_id')[0].toDataURL("image/jpeg");
try {
  imageData = dataURItoBlob(data);
} catch (e) {
  console.log(e);
}

FB.getLoginStatus(function (response) {
  if (response.status === "connected") {
    postImageToFacebook(response.authResponse.accessToken, imageData, caption, successCallback, errorCallback);
  } else if (response.status === "not_authorized") {
    FB.login(function (response) {
        postImageToFacebook(response.authResponse.accessToken, imageData, caption, successCallback, errorCallback);
    }, {scope: FBLoginScope});
  } else {
    FB.login(function (response) {
        postImageToFacebook(response.authResponse.accessToken, imageData, caption, successCallback, errorCallback);
    }, {scope: FBLoginScope});
  }
});

Modified from: http://gorigins.com/posting-a-canvas-image-to-facebook-and-twitter/