Automatic Facebook Authentication not working

[nincehelser]

I want to automatically authenticate into facebook without using a browser or any users involvement.

I've tried several pieces of sample code that says it will do that, but I always come back to this error. I think it might have something to do with a certificate?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test.py", line 16, in
'http://local.fbconsole.com:8080/',
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/fbconsole-0.3-py2.7.egg/fbconsole.py", line 427, in automatically_authenticate
code = oauth["code"][0]
KeyError: 'code'

[pcardune]

Can you post the code for your test script?

[pdam]

Hi guys ,
The error is the same that I see at my end .

        redirect_uri =  "https://127.0.0.1:8080"
        AUTH_SCOPE = ['publish_stream', 'publish_checkins', 'read_stream' , 'offline_access']
        fbconsole.SITE_URL=redirect_uri
        automatically_authenticate(self.fb_profileid , self.app_token  ,  fbconsole.ACCESS_TOKEN  , fbconsole.SITE_URL, True)
       automatically_authenticate(userName  , password  ,  fbconsole.ACCESS_TOKEN  , fbconsole.SITE_URL, True)

[jeredbrent]

Any luck getting this working? I'm also having this error.

[jeredbrent]

I'm pulling my hair out over here...
When executing the "automatically_authenticate" function, 127.0.0.1:8080 never displays open in netstat -nat
However, using the "authenticate" function I see that the basic http server running on 127.0.0.1:8080 until my desktop web browser is logged in and the success text displays.
Shouldn't the automatic function still start the basic server to server the page?
Do I need to call fbconsole.authenticate() before calling fbconsole.automatically_authenticate(xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx)?

I can manually fire up a basic webserver in another py script and can see response passed back to the web server.

Herp Derp...

[nincehelser]

I got what I needed to work. Here's what I ended up with.

#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: utf-8

# Most of this code I found on the Internet, but I don't recall where.  Don't ask me how it works. 
# It just does.  At least it just does as of today, 22 Aug 2013.
#
#  As-is, some weather data from my weather station and an image are posted on
#  Facebook under my user ID.
#  The machine sending the data can post the data without any manual involvement on my part.
#
# I hope this helps somebody. 
# 
# GDN
# george.nincehelser@gmail.com

import facebook
import urllib
import urlparse
import subprocess
import warnings

# Hide deprecation warnings. The facebook module isn't that up-to-date (facebook.GraphAPIError).
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore', category=DeprecationWarning)


# Parameters of your app and the id of the profile you want to mess with.
FACEBOOK_APP_ID     = 'your app id here'
FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET = 'your app secret here'
FACEBOOK_PROFILE_ID = 'your profile ID number here'


# Trying to get an access token. Very awkward. (original author's comment, not mine.  GDN)
oauth_args = dict(client_id     = FACEBOOK_APP_ID,
                  client_secret = FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET,
                  grant_type    = 'client_credentials')
oauth_curl_cmd = ['curl',
                  'https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?' + urllib.urlencode(oauth_args)]
oauth_response = subprocess.Popen(oauth_curl_cmd,
                                  stdout = subprocess.PIPE,
                                  stderr = subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]

try:
    oauth_access_token = urlparse.parse_qs(str(oauth_response))['access_token'] [0]  
except KeyError:
    print('Unable to grab an access token!')
    exit()

facebook_graph = facebook.GraphAPI(oauth_access_token)

# The following line reads a local file containing weather data to post on facebook.  GDN
linestring = open('/var/www/weewx/mobile.html', 'r').read()
print linestring

# The following lines attach an image and link to the posting.  GDN
attachment = {
        "name": "nincehelser.com",
        "link": "http://nincehelser.com",
        "caption": "Current Peru Weather",
        "description": linestring,
        "picture": "http://nincehelser.com/kneperu2/image.jpg"
        }




# Try to post something on the wall.
try:
    fb_response = facebook_graph.put_wall_post(linestring, attachment, profile_id  = FACEBOOK_PROFILE_ID )
    print fb_response
except facebook.GraphAPIError as e:
    print 'Something went wrong:', e.type, e.message

....

[jeredbrent]

Thanks @nincehelser ! This great stuff dude!

However, I need to use facebook_graph.put_photo() and this code errors because its just an app access token not a client token... (grant_type = 'client_credentials')

What I'm trying to accomplish is posting a photo that is taken with a raspberry pi to facebook whenever a physical button is pressed. Turns out that trying to do that with a headless device poses a bigger problem than I thought!

Your code does get me to the point where I can post a message and have a thumbnail and a link to to the image.

I looked at using IFTTT for copying the image to dropbox then having IFTTT post to facebook... but waiting 15 min for them to post is to slow for this purpose.

I suppose I could push the pic thats taken to dropbox public, bitly the link, then push that link to your code... kinda silly though as it will fill up the dropbox account with photos! hmm...

Hopefully the maintainer @pcardune is still alive!

[nincehelser]

I'm also working with a Pi. Let me know what you find out.

I don't understand why this authorization stuff has to be so cryptic, especially if you're trying to post to your own account.

[kchr]

I'm having the same problem here, but it seems to be related to using the custom redirect_uri http://local.fbconsole.com:8080 (as suggested in the README).

What this hostname really is resolving to is 127.0.0.1, which makes the Facebook auth API redirect the handshake to port 8080 on your local host. The redirect_uri is entered in your Facebook app settings.

However, for this redirect_uri to work something must be listening on port 8080 on your local host, to receive the information needed for creating the access token. When using authenticate(), fbconsole uses a built-in http server for this stage.

But for automatically_authenticate(), we have a different scenario with two pitfalls:

• There is no builtin http-server started to take care of your requests
• The redirect_uri from Facebook app settings is overriden via arguments to function call

Using automatically_authenticate() with http://local.fbconsole.com:8080 as request_uri:

mechanize._response.httperror_seek_wrapper: HTTP Error 504: Connect to local.fbconsole.com:8080 failed: Connection refused

So what this means is basically, to be able to use auto authentication you must use another OAuth service (redirect_uri) to handle the final handshake. Or we would need to rewrite automatically_authenticate() so it starts the built-in http server in a background thread.

A third solution would be to rewrite the mechanizer part of this code to use the low-level API mechanize.open() instead of mechanize.Browser(). This way it is possible to subclass the request handlers, making it easier to hijack the login flow and just get the data needed before actually going to redirect_uri. This would make a built-in httpd redudant, but probably makes for more complex code (involving http handler classes).

Any other ideas? I'll fork in the meantime.

[kchr]

By running one app which uses the authenticate() method and then starting another app with a call to automatically_authenticate(), it is possible to get to the last stage in OAuth handshake (after redirect_uri).

The first app starts the builtin-in httpd and a browser window, and keeps the httpd running until the window is closed. Ignore the window (keep it open) and start the second app, which will try to connect to the built-in httpd set up right before. The first app will log something like this:

127.0.0.1 - - [15/Dec/2014 01:46:10] "GET /?code=[...]&state=[...] HTTP/1.1" 200 -G

However making some initial tests it seems that the OAuth protocol used in the auto auth method is currently broken. After a successful call to the redirect_uri (our local http server, the log line shown above), a final request is made for Facebook to complete the handshake - which seems to be impossible right now.

I keep getting these errors (last step, auto auth):

send: 'GET /oauth/access_token?code=[...]&client_secret=[...] ...
reply: 'HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request\r\n'
header: WWW-Authenticate: OAuth "Facebook Platform" "invalid_code" "Error validating verification code. Please make sure your redirect_uri is identical to the one you used in the OAuth dialog request"

The error message suggests the redirect_uri has been changed. Looking at the debug logs it is the same in all requests, as well as on the facebook app page. I'm comparing the contents of the code parameter sent in this request with the query data sent to our local httpd and it matches exactly.

Should it be permutated or obfuscated in any form?

[pcardune]

Thanks for looking into this @kchr. I'm not sure about the error code. In general the automated login implementation, even when made to work, seems fragile at best. If you are interested in using it and can get a pull request out that makes it work up to the point where you get that platform error, I can try digging into why that error occurs from the facebook side.

[LA9SHA]

Is it possible to get access to Facebook without any GUI and no manually input?

I want to add pictures by cron job from a Raspberry Pi.

[pcardune]

@LA9SHA, yes, but only if you already have an access token. It's not possible to get an access token without a GUI. So you would have to get an access token beforehand and bake it in to your app. In this scenario, it would be a good idea to get a long lived access token that lasts for 60 days. Once you have that, you can refresh the access token periodically to make sure it continues to work.