Publish Actions Permissions

Ivan,
We've only done a little bit of testing with those different permissions, but it seems like the publish_stream permission is still required for actual wall posts (like the posts when logging in or registering). The publish_actions, I don't think, allows for those types of posts. It only allows for the Timeline updates, similar to "John read this article" or "Bob played this game".

We're working on the next release of JFBConnect which we're planning on having support Open Graph actions. At that point, we may remove the publish_stream permission if we realize it's not required for the posts we're doing, but as far as I know, it still is required for certain types of wall posts. The blog post was very vague on where the line is drawn.

As for where the publish_actions permissions shows, it's on the first login / app approval diaglog screen. There is a lighter grey box in the bottom right corner that says "This app may post actions on your behalf", or something similar. It does not appear in a 2nd permissions box like the publish_stream one does.

Hope that explains what we know, but we could definitely be wrong..

Thanks,
Alex

Actually, this comment from the blog post sums everything up best:

Hi Zachary: That's correct in terms of functionality - if your app is granted publish_stream, it can publish open graph actions (which previously required publish_actions permission). However, keep in mind that publish_stream is a second page permission, so if you only ask for publish_stream (or attempt to ask for both, in which the superset == publish_stream takes precedent over the subset == publish_actions), the permission will not appear until the second page of the auth dialog and may be revoked by the user. This is in contrast to only asking for publish_actions, which appears on first page of the dialog and may not be revoked during the auth flow.

So, publish_stream is a parent of publish_actions. If you ask for _stream, that is the permission that will be requested, it sounds like and publish_actions will *not* be requested. That means that a user then actually has the option to deny _stream, since it's on a separate dialog, and will then prevent all things from being posted to the user's timeline.

Not a great choice, honestly, but that looks like how it's implemented.

No problem. Glad to hear that helped. It sounds like the standard registration and login posts are being created as well with that permission? If so, that's great! We'd love to get rid of the 2nd permission window!

Thanks for your feedback,
Alex

Ivan,
For reading posts in the user's news feed, you'd need the "read_stream" permission. It's possible the publish_stream permission also grants the read_stream permission, which is why it worked before. It would kinda make sense that if you can publish to a user's wall, you can read those posts, but can't guarantee that.

If your using the publish_actions perm though, and need to read the stream, it sounds like you may want to explicitly ask for that permission as well.

For reference, here's all the permissions:
developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissions/

Hope that helps!
Alex

Wittydan,
Right now, there isn't any documentation or guides on how to publish actions as it's not an integrated part of JFBConnect. Our next major release is planned to have a pretty simple process for adding objects and actions to pages and events. Until then, you can look at the long thread below which has a quick guide on how to add some PHP code and other objects to your page to allow for actions to occur. It's definitely a bit complex to do by yourself right now, and I'd recommend either know PHP or having a developer on hand.

The post is long, but this link starts off with some feedback from myself on how to get going. Feel free to read on from there (or even above) to try to wrap your head around it.
www.sourcecoast.com/forums/jfbconnect/jf...ph-action?p=1#p23235

Should you have any questions, we'll gladly help how we can, but moreso, I'd recommend waiting for the next release either in late September or October.

Thanks,
Alex