spring social console application with main method

[aki200]

Hi all,

I am trying to figure out the spring social and OAuth authentication. In order to do this I cloned the sample project form git clone git://github.com/SpringSource/spring-social-samples.git. and I used spring-social-quickstart as I starting point.

I loded the appication context and I started creating the FacebookConnectionFactory. Everything is going well til I bumped in to the HttpServletResponse line. I don't really want to use this to build web application where users can login to their accounts by using my application. Instead I need this for the custom cms that I am building, in which the content editors would be able to push content to social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn... For example to their company's Facebook profile. This should be done by cms, automatically without further interaction required from the content editors.

Here is where I am stuck:

FacebookConnectionFactory connectionFactory = 
    new FacebookConnectionFactory("clientId", "clientSecret");
OAuth2Operations oauthOperations = connectionFactory.getOAuthOperations();
OAuth2Parameters params = new OAuth2Parameters();
params.setRedirectUri("https://my-callback-url");
String authorizeUrl = oauthOperations.buildAuthorizeUrl(GrantType.IMPLICIT_GRANT, params);
response.sendRedirect(authorizeUrl); // do I need this?

// upon receiving the callback from the provider:
AccessGrant accessGrant = new AccessGrant(accessToken); // I need this token too. Don't know how to get it.
Connection<Facebook> connection = connectionFactory.createConnection(accessGrant);

How can I achieve Facebook connection and the ability to post something on my own wall directly from a java console application? Is this even possible in spring social?

[aki200]

anyone? (10 characters)

[habuma]

Sorry for the delayed response. But to be fair, you did ask it on the weekend and I'm sure most of us (me included) were enjoying that time away from the computers.

So, you're looking to pushing to a company's Facebook page instead of a user's own page. To do that you'll need what Facebook calls a "Page Access Token"...and the only way (that I know of) to get a page access token is to fetch it from the profile of a user who is authorized to publish to that page. So, you'll still need to do the standard connection to get an access token for your CMS users. Then from that you can use methods in the PageOperations interface to work with stuff at a page level...under the covers, PageTemplate will retrieve the page access token for the user (if they are authorized) and use it.

I see that you're using the low-level OAuth 2 stuff that Spring Social offers...is there a reason you chose to do that instead of using ConnectController? Assuming that you're building a web application, ConnectController can handle all of that redirection stuff for you and create connections on behalf of your users. It would be essentially the same arrangement as what you see in the Spring Social Showcase sample. The only *minor* difference is that you'd use stuff in PageOperations to publish to pages.

If you're not building a web app (let's say your CMS is a desktop app) then you would need to use Resource Owner Credentials Grant to obtain the access token for the user...I can help you with that, too if that's what you want...but I'll spare you the details until I know that's what you're trying to do.

In short, in order to publish to a page, you'll need to get a page access token. Each user who is authorized to publish to the page is given their own page access token. But if you're using Spring Social's Facebook API binding you don't need to worry about that...just get a regular access token for that user and the operations provided by PageOperations/PageTemplate will deal with obtaining a page access token transparently.

[aki200]

no worries, I am aware that it was weekend.
I will start by explaining what I am trying to build. It is indeed a web application which will serve as CMS. What they want is ability to optionally push some of their articles/content to their company's social accounts/pages. There is not going to any functionality for their visitors to login on their website true some of the social providers. That is why I don't need the ConnectController to do this.

The reason that I started exploring spring social by using this low level authentication stuff is because I was not able to find any example how to get this basic functionality that some social sites provide, by using spring social. All of the examples are centered about fancy stuff that social sites provide. I guess the reason for that is very simple, those functionality's are more complex to integrate in an web application.

Anyway I did some digging in spring social java doc and found out that it actually pretty strait forward to achieve what I want by using spring social.
taadaa... this is it!

...
public static void main(String[] args) {
...
TwitterTemplate twitterTemplate = new TwitterTemplate(API_KEY, API_SECRET, ACCES_TOKEN, ACCES_TOKEN_SECRET);
twitterTemplate.timelineOperations().updateStatus( "hello there");

}
...

As you can see, it is just basic stuff that I want. In this case is that a tweet on my own twitter account.
Anyway, thank you for your help and your offer to help me even further but, if the Facebook template is anywhere near, as simple as this I think I will manage to do it without bordering you any further. If not you will hear form me .

Once I am done whit this project I will write a tutorial on how to do this basic stuff with spring social, it may be useful to other, noobs like me. If you don't mind, I can send it to you and maybe you can put it on some of the spring related sites or even documentation.
Anyway thanks again for your time.

p.s. sorry for the bad English.

[habuma]

That's great that you figured this out. FacebookTemplate is even simpler because all you need to give it is your access token. My question for you, however, is how are you going to get that access token?

I wasn't anticipating that you'd use ConnectController for visitors to create connections with...I was thinking that your content creators would use it to create a connection to their Facebook profile, which in-turn would create a FacebookTemplate for you from the access token on the connection. From there, the internals of FacebookTemplate can use that token to obtain the page access token needed to publish to a page.

So, my question remains: How will you obtain the access token needed to construct FacebookTemplate? I can think of several ways, but I'm curious which approach you'll be taking.

[habuma]

BTW, it just occurred to me that I didn't address the 2nd part of your last post: By all means, please write up anything you see fit for Spring Social. I'm always excited to see community-written articles and will be happy to link to it from the Spring Social homepage.