Contao News Facebook Sync

Project web site: Contao News Facebook Sync

This extension allows to automatically import Facebook page (or group) posts as news entries. It also enables you to automatically post news entries on a Facebook page. This allows you to keep a Facebook page in sync with a news archive.

Installation

To install this extension, the composer.json of your Contao installation has to be modified first. Two adjustments have to be done: adding the private repository & adding the dependency.

To add the repository, add the following to your composer.json:

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "https://<YOUR_USERNAME>:<YOUR_TOKEN>@packeton.inspiredminds.at"
        }
    ]
}

Replace <YOUR_USERNAME> and <YOUR_TOKEN> with the credentials you received from INSPIRED MINDS.

To add the dependency, add the following to your composer.json:

{
    "require": {
        "inspiredminds/contao-news-facebook": "^9.0"
    }
}

View a full example

{
    "name": "contao/managed-edition",
    "type": "project",
    "description": "Contao Open Source CMS",
    "license": "LGPL-3.0-or-later",
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "Leo Feyer",
            "homepage": "https://github.com/leofeyer"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "contao/conflicts": "@dev",
        "contao/manager-bundle": "5.3.*",
        "inspiredminds/contao-news-facebook": "^9.0"
    },
    "conflict": {
        "contao-components/installer": "<1.3"
    },
    "extra": {
        "contao-component-dir": "assets",
    },
    "scripts": {
        "post-install-cmd": [
            "@php vendor/bin/contao-setup"
        ],
        "post-update-cmd": [
            "@php vendor/bin/contao-setup"
        ]
    },
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "https://<YOUR_USERNAME>:<YOUR_TOKEN>@packeton.inspiredminds.at"
        }
    ]
}

After making this adjustment, run a composer update on the command line or update your packages via the Contao Manager. Then update the database as usual.

Configuration

Creating a Facebook App

To configure this extension, a “Facebook App” needs to created first. The details of this app are then needed for the configuration in the back end.

Tip

You can skip this step if your Facebook page is not associated with a Meta Business account. Then the extension will use its own Facebook app, which has approval to fetch and write data to your Facebook page.

Facebook does not allow access to pages connected to a Meta Business account anymore, without the business_management permission for which the Facebook app the extension comes with does not have approval for.

First you need to go to developers.facebook.com. If you do not have a Facebook developer account yet, you need to create one (or unlock your existing Facebook user as a developer account).
Under My Apps click on Create App.
Type in an App name for the App (e.g. the title of your website) and enter an App contact email.
Next you define a use case for the app. Choose Other at the bottom.
Next you define an app type. Choose Business.
On the next page click on Create app.
Next you can add “products” to your app. At the bottom click on Set up for Facebook Login for Business.
Under Client OAuth settings you need to enter Valid OAuth Redirect URIs. Here enter the following URL: https://example.org/_facebook/callback. Replace example.org with the domain of your website. Then click on Save Changes.

Note

The account under which you create this App must also have the rights to create timeline posts on the Facebook page you wish to synchronize with (optional if you only want to fetch Facebook Page posts). Alternatively you can also add further Administrator or Developers after you created the App in the Roles section.

Configure the App ID and App Secret in Contao

Tip

This step can be skipped if you are using the Facebook App provided by the extension.

In your Facebook app, go to App settings » Basic. Copy the App ID and App secret and configure it in your config/config.yaml:

# config/config.yaml
contao_news_facebook:
    app_id: '123456789123456'
    app_secret: 'abc123abc123abc123abc123abc123ab'

However, since these are secrets, it is recommended not to store them directly in your config.yaml and thus possibly push them to the Git repository of your project. Instead you should use environment variables:

# .env
# Define empty defaults
FACEBOOK_APP_ID=
FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET=

# .env.local
# Set the actual values
FACEBOOK_APP_ID=123456789123456
FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET=abc123abc123abc123abc123abc123ab

# config/config.yaml
# Reference the environment variables
contao_news_facebook:
    app_id: '%env(FACEBOOK_APP_ID)%'
    app_secret: '%env(FACEBOOK_APP_SECRET)%'

Configure the Contao News Archive

Go to the settings of your news archive. In the Facebook sync section enable Facebook sync and enter the numeric ID of the Facebook Page you want to synchronize with. If you wish to automatically fetch the Facebook Page posts and add them to your news archive, enable the Fetch page posts option. Optionally, also define a Page post date limit.

You can also do the same for a Facebook Group, if you want to fetch posts from that group. Note, however, that publishing news entries as Facebook posts is only supported for Facebook Pages, not for Groups.

Lastly you need to fetch an Access Token. Click on the Facebook connect button next to the input field - this will log you into Facebook and it will request some permissions from your Facebook user. After you have confirmed the permissions a “Long Term Access Token” will be fetched from Facebook.

Note

If you want to let Contao publish news posts to your Facebook page, you need to allow the Facebook App to post publicly on your behalf, when granting permissions. The Facebook account under which you log in to fetch the Access Token also must have the rights to create timeline posts on the Facebook page.

Any downloaded images will be saved to the folder configured in your news archive (files/facebook_images by default). Like any other folder, this folder needs to be made public under Contao 4!

Additional settings

Since version 3.0.0 you can also set the following settings in the system settings of Contao under Facebook Sync:

No meta tags: since version 3.0.0 the extension also automatically includes an og:image meta tag in the <head> wherever a news article is parsed, so that its teaser image will be displayed by Facebook automatically, whenever someone shares a link to a news entry. With this option you can disable this functionality.

Post as photo: since version 3.0.0 news entries are not posted as photo posts anymore, whenever the news entry has a teaser image. With this option you can re-enable this functionality.

If you do not use a hook, the default headline length can be configured via

# config/config.yaml
contao_news_facebook:
    headline_length: 64

Usage

Fetch Facebook Page/Group posts

Once you have configured the news archive and also enabled the Fetch page posts or Fetch group posts option the extension will check for new Facebook posts hourly via Contao’s cronjob.

Publish Facebook posts

Contao news entries will be published as Facebook page posts under two conditions:

in the news entry’s properties, under the Facebook sync section, the Post to Facebook page option must be enabled
the news entry must be published

You can also define a custom message for the Facebook post. If no such message is defined, the news entry’s teaser is used by default.

The extension will check for new news entries to be published minutely via Contao’s cronjob.

Manual sync trigger

There is a button to trigger a sync in the back end, within the global operations for news archives.

Hooks

The extension provides some Hooks which allow you to alter the behavior when posting to Facebook or fetching Facebook posts.

`processFacebookPost`

The extension processes a Facebook post and tries to convert it to a fitting Contao news entry as best as it can. If you want to customize the final data for a news entry of a Facebook post, you can use the processFacebookPost hook. It expects an array containing the final news entry data as the return value. If the return value equals to false, no news entry will be created.

Parameters

array $arrData The already processed data which will be used for the new news entry.
object $objPost The original Facebook post data.
object $objArchive The news archive object.

`changeFacebookMessage`

When posting a Contao news entry as a Facebook post, the extension either uses the teaser or the specified message of the news entry. If you want to automatically provide a different message, you can use the changeFacebookMessage hook. It expects the final message as the return value.

Parameters

string $message The already prepared message.
object $objArticle The original Contao news entry.
object $objArchive The news archive object.

Example

The following example appends the news article’s URL to any photo post:

// src/EventListener/ChangeFacebookMessageListener.php
namespace App\EventListener;

use Contao\CoreBundle\DependencyInjection\Attribute\AsHook;
use Contao\CoreBundle\Routing\ContentUrlGenerator;
use Contao\NewsArchiveModel;
use Contao\NewsModel;
use Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGeneratorInterface;

#[AsHook('changeFacebookMessage')]
class ChangeFacebookMessageListener
{
    public function __construct(private readonly ContentUrlGenerator $contentUrlGenerator)
    {
    }

    public function __invoke(string $message, NewsModel $news, NewsArchiveModel $archive): string
    {
        // Append the URL to photo posts
        if ($news->addImage && $news->fbPostAsPhoto) {
            $message .= "\n\n".$this->contentUrlGenerator->generate($news, [], UrlGeneratorInterface::ABSOLUTE_URL);
        }

        return $message;
    }
}

Template data

There is additional data available in the news templates:

object fbData The original Facebook post data
string fbPostId The Facebook post ID of the linked Facebook post
char fromFb Indicates whether this news entry was fetched from Facebook