Posting links without duplicating OpenGraph tags

[Tim Poultney]

Hi SpringSource,

Thanks for SpringSocial, we're using it and it works very well.

When you manually post a link on Facebook, their scraper pulls the OpenGraph tags out of the linked page and makes a nice preview.

We're currently using a LinkedMultiValueMap to post links to our users' feeds (via connection.getApi().publish("me", "feed", map)) and ideally we'd like the same behaviour - we post just a URI and Facebook scrapes it to pick up our OpenGraph tags.

However, if we pass in a map with just the key value pairs link and message, our OpenGraph tags don't get scraped.

Is there any way to get behaviour I've described?

Thanks!

Tim

[habuma]

That's a really good question, and (unfortunately) my best answer is that I don't know. I was aware that FB did what you describe, but I was unaware that it doesn't do it when you post a link via the API (at least with the link and message keys). What I do know is that when you do that manually on FB, you typically post a link as part of a message itself and FB is doing some on-the-fly parsing and doing that scraping as you type the link (you see the preview before you even post the link)--I'm not sure what (if anything) you can do through the API to accomplish the same effect.

I'll make it a task to try to figure this out, though...and if there's any API binding work that needs to be done to support it I'll add it as an improvement. In the meantime, if anyone else reading this has any insight into doing this, please let me know by posting a comment on https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SOCIALFB-91.

[Tim Poultney]

Thanks Craig, the another think I've spotted is that the terminology you use in Spring Social differs from the that used by OpenGraph - perhaps you should make them consistent?

OG image = Social picture
OG url = Social link
OG title = Social name

Social also offers a caption field, I can't work out how that one maps.

[Tim Poultney]

Any updates here please?

[habuma]

I'm sorry to say that I was otherwise tasked for the past couple of months in advance of SpringOne/2GX. I am now, however, more focused on Spring Social and getting a 1.1.0.M1 release out than before. At the moment, that issue is still scheduled for 1.1.0.M1, so I'll certainly be looking into this soon. If you watch https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SOCIALFB-91, then you'll know as soon as I take action.