Sharing on Android

Prerequisites

Before you can share to Facebook from your app, you'll need to:

• Add the Facebook SDK for Android to your mobile development environment
• Get a Facebook App ID properly configured and linked to your Android app. See Android Getting Started, Add Facebook App ID
• Generate an Android Key Hash and add it to your developer profile
• Add Facebook Activity - Include this in AndroidManifest.xml

For details on these requirements, see Android - Getting Started.

You also need to set up a ContentProvider in your AndroidManifest.xml where {APP_ID} is your app ID:

<provider android:authorities="com.facebook.app.FacebookContentProvider{APP_ID}"
          android:name="com.facebook.FacebookContentProvider"
          android:exported="true"/>

When you implement sharing, your app should not pre-fill any content to be shared. This is inconsistent with Facebook Platform Policy, see Facebook Platform Policy, 2.3.

Add Sharing Interfaces

After you handle content by building a model, you can either trigger a Facebook sharing interface or build your own that calls the Graph API.

Buttons

Facebook offers native buttons for Android for triggering sharing.

Like Button

The Like button is a quick way for people to share content with their friends. A tap on the Like button will 'like' pieces of content from your app and share them on Facebook. To add a Like button add the following code snippet to your view:

LikeView likeView = (LikeView) findViewById(R.id.like_view);
likeView.setObjectIdAndType(
    "https://www.facebook.com/FacebookDevelopers",
    LikeView.ObjectType.PAGE);

Share Button

The Share button will call a Share dialog. To add a Share button add the following code snippet to your view:

ShareButton shareButton = (ShareButton)findViewById(R.id.fb_share_button);
shareButton.setShareContent(content);

Send Button

The Send button lets people privately send photos, videos and links to their friends and contacts using the Facebook Messenger. The Send button will call a Message dialog. To add a Send button to your view add the following code snippet to your view:

SendButton sendButton = (SendButton)findViewById(R.id.fb_send_button);
sendButton.setShareContent(shareContent);
sendButton.registerCallback(callbackManager, new FacebookCallback<Sharer.Result>() { ... });

Share Dialog

The Share dialog switches to the native Facebook for Android app, then returns control to your app after a post is published. If the Facebook app is not installed it will automatically fallback to the web-based dialog.

ShareDialog.show(activityOrFragment, content);

For example, to show the ShareDialog for a link in your activity, create a ShareDialog instance in your onCreate method:

public class MainActivity extends FragmentActivity {
    CallbackManager callbackManager;
    ShareDialog shareDialog;
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        FacebookSdk.sdkInitialize(getApplicationContext());
        callbackManager = CallbackManager.Factory.create();
        shareDialog = new ShareDialog(this);
        // this part is optional
        shareDialog.registerCallback(callbackManager, new FacebookCallback<Sharer.Result>() { ... });
    }

Then show the ShareDialog:

if (ShareDialog.canShow(ShareLinkContent.class)) {
    ShareLinkContent linkContent = new ShareLinkContent.Builder()
            .setContentTitle("Hello Facebook")
            .setContentDescription(
                    "The 'Hello Facebook' sample  showcases simple Facebook integration")
            .setContentUrl(Uri.parse("http://developers.facebook.com/android"))
            .build();

    shareDialog.show(linkContent);
}

Finally call the SDK's callbackManager in your onActivityResult to handle the response:

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(final int requestCode, final int resultCode, final Intent data) {
    super.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
    callbackManager.onActivityResult(requestCode, resultCode, data);
}

Message Dialog

The Message dialog switches to the native Messenger for Android app, then returns control to your app after a post is published.

MessageDialog.show(activityOrFragment, content);

Custom Interface

If you want to use your own interface for sharing, you need to:

• Build a custom interface that posts to the Graph API endpoint /me/feed
• Implement Facebook Login in your app
• Request the publish_actions permission when people log into your app

Here's the code for posting a link to Facebook from your own interface:

ShareApi.share(content, null);

Advanced Topics

Built-In Share Fallbacks

In past versions of the SDK for Android, your app had to check for a native, installed Facebook app before it could open the Share Dialog. If the person didn't have the app installed, you had to provide your own code to call a fallback dialog.

Now the SDK automatically checks for the native Facebook app. If it isn't installed, the SDK switches people to their default browser and opens the Feed Dialog. If someone wants to share an Open Graph story, the SDK opens the Web Share Dialog.

App Links

With App Links you link back to your app from Facebook posts published from your app. When people click a Facebook post published from your app, it opens your app, and you can even link to specific content within the app.

Sharing Open Graph Stories

Open Graph Stories let people share rich, structured content through a strongly typed API defined by Open Graph actions and objects. These posts link back to your app or to your app's App Store page.

To learn more about how to configure Open Graph stories, see Open Graph Stories in Android.

Build your share content for Open Graph actions into the ShareOpenGraphContent model. For a list of all attributes, see ShareOpenGraphContent reference.

ShareOpenGraphObject object = new ShareOpenGraphObject.Builder()
        .putString("og:type", "fitness.course")
        .putString("og:title", "Sample Course")
        .putString("og:description", "This is a sample course.")
        .putInt("fitness:duration:value", 100)
        .putString("fitness:duration:units", "s")
        .putInt("fitness:distance:value", 12)
        .putString("fitness:distance:units", "km")
        .putInt("fitness:speed:value", 5)
        .putString("fitness:speed:units", "m/s")
        .build();
ShareOpenGraphAction action = new ShareOpenGraphAction.Builder()
        .setActionType("fitness.runs")
        .putObject("fitness:course", object)
        .build();
ShareOpenGraphContent content = new ShareOpenGraphContent.Builder()
        .setPreviewPropertyName("fitness:course")
        .setAction(action)
        .build();