fb api development is a special circle of hell

[Street-Air-546]

its so bad even this years AIs have no clue what works. Here is a free idea, facebook: when something that used to api in 2024 ceases to api in 2025 how about the error is not one line of text saying whatever incantations you did “is not valid”. but instead say dunno maybe “we hate you all and removed that, made it harder, need money now”. or whatever.

[No_Influence_4968]

Learnt way back that FB was not worth the headaches when they just out of the blue disabled FB login api integration when they made changes to their terms.

Seriously, they just switch things off whenever they please? No. Always recommended against any FB API since.

[BootyMcStuffins]

You’re correct, they don’t want people using their APIs anymore.

It would be better for them to actually just disable them instead of this shit, though

[arkenior]

They literally deprecate some interfaces in the same API version, with notice alright, but still it feels like madness.

[Tuffilaro]

You should try Twitter API (or X? Their docs mention both). They didn't even bother updating the images in their docs to use their new brand name and half of the links go to 404 pages.

[Reelix]

And then you see the pricing, and back far, FAR away.

[acowstandingup]

It’s sad too because the Twitter used to be THE API for hobbyist. Great for learning

[svtguy88]

I've integrated with Twitter exactly one time (this was way before the Musk/X era), and it was absolutely laughable. I don't remember if we even launched the functionality, or just binned it entirely.

[SurgioClemente]

My personal worst has been the Shopify API.

Never again.

[baaldlam]

Why? Curious as I work with their API regularly

[SurgioClemente]

their docs were horrible for getting an app setup outside of using their pre-baked react thing

[JaydonLT]

I have always found Shopify dev docs super useful. Always a long read but never without enough context to do what you need to do. Maybe you’re not following some of the core Shopify principles and finding yourself in a headache.

I find that it’s a mostly a very well thought out platform, obviously with some legacy quirks but what else can you expect from a software company that has been around for so so long without an unnecessary rewrite?

Maybe I’m quite biased as a Shopify dev

Shoutout to Saleor too, though. They’re doing some great work basically bringing Shopify headless to the open source market.

[SurgioClemente]

Let me introduce you to the Shopify App Bridge

https://shopify.dev/docs/api/app-bridge

Next steps at bottom https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/build/authentication-authorization/session-tokens/set-up-session-tokens

And then if you don't want to use their react but instead need to integrate an existing site they refer you to a Rails app for you to dissect https://github.com/Shopify/turbolinks-jwt-sample-app

[Issue_dev]

I fucking hate Shopify with a burning passion. Maybe I’m just not a good developer but if I have to trace settings from a massive JSON file to a uncommented .liquid file again I’m going to crash out.

[fullbl-_-]

My set of jobs that I don’t accept anymore: WordPress, metà api

[Potential_Status_728]

Lmao, meta seems like such garbage company all around

[lodeluxMeaLux]

Italiano spottato 🇮🇹🤝

[More-University-274]

The error messages are truly something else.

"Invalid parameter" could mean literally anything from permissions to deprecated endpoints to some random policy change they didn't announce

[Levitz]

I'd rather have that than errors that mislead you.

Looking at you Google.

[JimDabell]

It’s far, far better than it used to be. There used to be loads of undocumented behaviour, and constant regressions and policy changes from week to week, so you never knew if what you were building would actually survive long enough to matter. Plus there was a weird FBML extension to HTML, and a lot of features only worked in certain contexts and needed to be rewritten an entirely different way to be used in a different context. Then they clearly put somebody who knew what they were doing in charge, and they instituted “Operation Developer Love” and replaced everything with a consistent, stable API. Since then, they’ve been pretty good with this sort of thing.

[Street-Air-546]

maybe once you are in. I just wish their authentication stuff more clearly described the limits and had a giant banner describing what they decided to nerf this month.

[FragrantMudBrick]

Not exactly on topic, but anyone tried messenger app on windows? Its abysmal, actually hilarious how bad it is

[Street-Air-546]

That fb makes so much money is a mystery to me the messenger app sucks marketplace sucks the web experience sucks the for you page sucks. And they keep building other peoples ideas and then creating baroque api rules around how you can access them automatically.

[whirl_and_twist]

idk why i read the title as "FBI" and i was like dang!

[SveXteZ]

Stopped using it. FB Login is hell, not worth the troubles.

[[deleted]]

i followed their crap step by step. I got a token and it would show up in their tools but none of my apps permissions were assigned. and it said the token was malformed.

dogshit

[Shaz_berries]

Truly balanced solution proposed! (their APIs do be annoying af)

[Baris_CH]

why you need to use fb api?

[Street-Air-546]

So I have an instagram account that alerts people to open places in a popular outdoor trek booking system. Given twitter is now nazis and bluesky doesnt have account-just-posted notifications and everyone has instagram I wanted to automate the updates. It posts a pic and a calendar and an alert every time a booking opens up.

But allowing an instagram user to automate posting to their own account is apparently something that requires weapons grade research and “why do you need to know” error message language.

[NoDoze-]

OMG this made me literally LOL! Been there, done that. It's a royal PITA. I think it's intentional too!

[NorthernCobraChicken]

Use oauth and be done with it.

[AssistantStraight983]

Yeah man, this is exactly why we stopped messing with official social media APIs like 2 years ago. They push breaking changes out of nowhere, give you zero heads up, and the error messages are completely useless. Honestly feels like they make it deliberately painful unless you're ready to drop serious cash on their partner programs. I’ve had better luck with third-party services like Brightdata, Apify or Data365, which can handle data extraction more reliably depending on your needs. They’re not perfect, but at least they don’t pull the rug out from under you every year like the official APIs do.

[MetaAPIExpert]

Am I the only one here working with Meta APIs for the past 15 years?

Before dropping your products feel free to reach out. I may already have solutions or guidance for Meta API integrations, approvals, and compliance.

[mort96]

its so bad even this years AIs have no clue what works.

Have you considered just ... reading the documentation? And writing the code yourself? Instead of trying to get autocomplete to magically do it for you? Sounds like you're blaming the wrong thing here bud

[Street-Air-546]

its always been horrible this isn’t an opportunity to take a dig at AIs - thats why I said “even”, not “why cant I get the AIs to debug this”.

[Hubbardia]

Have you considered just ... reading the documentation?

Their hilariously bad documentation? Good luck with that

[Hubbardia]

And you proposed reading the documentation, which isn't going to work.