Sep 10

Facebook API - setFBML() and profile_main

Programming Facebook, Python

This is a stupid gotcha that took me WAAAAY too long to figure out.

If you’re using the Facebook API with the new profile pages and attempting to set the FBML for a box on the wall and info pages it won’t work out of the box. You need to take whichever client library you’re using (PyFacebook, PHP, etc.) and make sure to point it at http://api.new.facebook.com/. Only then will the profile_main parameter get properly parsed. It would be fabulous if Facebook was to make API differences like that explicit by say, oh, I don’t know, revving the protocol version?

In addition, if you’re using PyFacebook (at least up to r157) you should add the type parameter to facebook.profile.getFBML() in the __init__.py file for the library. Here’s the open issue in PyFacebook’s issue tracker.