Facebook Graph api delete group or page post

Here is something interesting that i recently found out when i was working on my social media site, toolbox.my. I was trying to delete post that was sent out from this app but there wasn't any documentation written on it and after some investigation and testing i finally got it right!

Deleting User Post

Before i go into how group post is being deleted, if we look at facebook graph api, it stated under "Deleting" that

An app can delete a post if it published it

Which means that a post can only delete by the person who creates it. Therefore, if this is a post created by an app, only the app can deleted it although the user created it using the app. On the other hand, if the user create a post in app and tries to use the app to delete, it won't work.

Now, if we look at the php sample code from the graph api, its pretty straight forward.

/* make the API call */
$request = new FacebookRequest(
  $session,
  'DELETE',
  '/{post-id}'
);
$response = $request->execute();
$graphObject = $response->getGraphObject();
/* handle the result */

but but but, if it said there isn't such method (which usually will), this is most likely because you will also need to indicated who's post this is by doing this,

/* make the API call */
$request = new FacebookRequest(
  $session,
  'DELETE',
  '/{user-id}_{post-id}'
);
$response = $request->execute();
$graphObject = $response->getGraphObject();
/* handle the result */

and it should delete it properly

Deleting Group or Page Post

If you did read what i wrote on deleting user post, you might have guessed how this could apply to all other post created from other section. All you really need to do to delete group post is to do this

/* make the API call */
$request = new FacebookRequest(
  $session,
  'DELETE',
  '/{group-id}_{post-id}'
);
$response = $request->execute();
$graphObject = $response->getGraphObject();
/* handle the result */

while page post you would do this

/* make the API call */
$request = new FacebookRequest(
  $session,
  'DELETE',
  '/{page-id}_{post-id}'
);
$response = $request->execute();
$graphObject = $response->getGraphObject();
/* handle the result */

Basically its the same and the trick here is to tell the delete restful api that you are going to delete a particular object post and these object can be either user, page or groups.

Deleting Post Using Facebook api

In Summary, i would say if you are deleting using facebook api, make sure that the post that you are deleting is created by the app itself and not by the user and since you are using facebook graph api, it is most likely you are using an app to delete a post that was created by your facebook api. Just take note that you can only delete anything created by your app and you won't be able to delete any post by the user although the user is logged into your app (but the app is deleting the user post so it wont work).

Completely removing Node.js and Npm

Apparently i needed to completely remove my node.js and npm installation in my mac mavericks because i have installed various version of node.js from brew and nodejs.org website. After removing node from Brew, i am still able to access my node on my terminal and decides to write this to help anyone who is looking into removing and reinstalling node altogether (either from source or brew)

Removing Node.js

Credit goes to Dominic Tancredi
To recap, the best way (I've found) to completely uninstall node + npm is to do the following:

  • go to /usr/local/lib and delete any node and node_modules
  • go to /usr/local/include and delete any node and node_modules directory
  • if you installed with brew install node, then run brew uninstall node in your terminal
  • check your Home directory for any "local" or "lib" or "include" folders, and delete any "node" or "node_modules" from there
  • go to /usr/local/bin and delete any node executable

You may need to do the additional instructions as well:

  • remove: /usr/local/bin/npm
  • remove: /usr/local/share/man/man1/node.1
  • remove: /usr/local/lib/dtrace/node.d
  • execute: rm -rf /Users/[homedir]/.npm

Then download nvm and follow the instructions to install node. The latest versions of node come with npm, I believe, but you can also reinstall that as wel

Node still isn't uninstalled!

If you have done the above and you can still execute node on your terminate by firing

node

then you might need to do the following. Download the source code from nodejs.org exactly like how you have installed your nodejs from source


git clone git://github.com/ry/node.git
cd node
./configure
make
sudo make install

Inside the source code, instead of hitting 'make' and 'make install', do the following

sudo make uninstall

This instruction will uninstall whatever the source has installed into your machine.

Node and Npm still not uninstalled

Well, if you did all the above and you can still use node on your machine. You might want to try using 'locate' and manually removing all the necessary npm and node files in your machine by using

locate node 
locate npm

after you remove anything from the above command, you should fire the following to update the latest locate database

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

but you will have the fire the above command every time you successfully remove certain directory as 'locate' only update periodically at a specific time every day.

Removing Brew and Reinstalling it

I faced an issue with my brew installation which caused a lot of ruby error popping out every time i uses Brew. Therefore i needed a way to reinstall brew.

Uninstall Brew

A quick Google search lead me to Uninstalling brew (so I can reinstall) by Eneko Alonso and he has all the instruction listed to cleanly removing your brew installation. But make sure the first one (`brew –prefix`) returns the path where homebrew was installed properly. If not, you might ending up removing stuff from your computer you did not intend to remove.

cd `brew --prefix`
rm -rf Cellar
brew prune
rm -rf Library .git .gitignore bin/brew README.md share/man/man1/brew
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew

Reinstalling Brew

All you have to do is fire this on your terminal

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

Sit back and relax until Brew is fully installed. Once its done, remember to use "brew doctor" to make sure it said  the following


$ brew doctor
Your system is raring to brew.

and we are good to go!

Varnish Error 418 I’m a teapot

Recently i installed varnish into our cPanel server on my web hosting company in Malaysia. The installation is pretty straight forward and simple but the only issue here is that my main website is getting an 'error' text rather than showing me my varnish website.  If you inspect element, it will gives you Error 418 in its http headache with the error "I'm a teapot" which makes me a little irritated with it.

I was getting this error because my main website has a dedicated ip which is different from the rest of the account. This also means that my varnish configuration is a little different from all other account in it. But getting 'error' isn't what i was after. Normally one will just skip varnish entirely because it doesn't work. However,  you shouldn't be worry too much on it. Apparently the error was caused by varnish cached and if you plunge it, your website should be showing up fine. Below you can find purge command for varnish 3.0

sudo varnishadm "ban req.http.host ~ www.mydomain.com"

or

sudo varnishadm "ban req.http.host ~ /"

The only thing you might need to take note is the browser cache showing on your browser which might mislead you and makes you panic for a bit. If it still showing error 418, all you need to do is wait a little bit and it should show up nicely.