SerialBumper Barebone

No seriously, this is super barebone example of post bumping on facebook using rufus-scheduler and koala gems.

Instruction

I assume you know how to use terminal and unix stuff etc, hackers.

1. Get a heroku account. Install the toolbelt and learn how to use it.

2. Create an application on facebook developers. Then go to graph explorer, select the app you just created, then click on Get Access Token. Your access token will actually expire soon, refer to Extending Access Token Lifetime is Issues section below.

3. Under User Data Permissions, tick user_groups. Then under Extended Permissions, tick publish_actions. We are going to need the permissions to post a comment to your target group post, then delete it to bump the post.

4. Once you authorized your app to do such actions, copy down the access token generated.

5. Find your group post ID. If your group post permalink is https://www.facebook.com/groups/groupname/permalink/736699879685753, then your post ID should be the last part of URL, bunch of numbers.

6. Now we gonna create a heroku app for that. Before that please initiate git repository.

   # Replace xxxbumperxxx with any name you want
   $ git init
   $ heroku create xxxbumperxxx
   

7. Once you have created the app, we set the environment variables.

   $ heroku config:set POST_ID=736699879685753 ACCESS_TOKEN=fewjfjwfjewfhjcbvhh324732u32832d2h23h892982389289h92dhu32uiehu FREQUENCY=10m
   

8. Push the app up

   $ git add .
   $ git commit -m 'Let the bumping begin!'
   $ git push -u heroku master
   # Building bla bla bla
   

9. If the deployment is successful, we start the bump dyno.

   $ heroku ps:scale bump=1
   

Use this at your own risk.

Issues

Extending Access Token Lifetime

Your access token actually expires quite soon, no fret, we just need to extend it.

Now before you set the short lived access token into heroku config (or if you did, never mind). We are going to use it to exchange for a long lived one, I guess it probably lasts around 60 days.

Type the following URL into browser, replace the variables (CAPITALIZED ONES):

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=APP_ID&client_secret=APP_SECRET&grant_type=fb_exchange_token&fb_exchange_token=THE_TOKEN_YOU_GOT_FROM_GRAPH_EXPLORER_JUST_NOW

Once you got the new access token, set it to Heroku environment variable:

$ heroku config:set ACCESS_TOKEN=new_access_token

The bumper will restart itself with the new access token. Sweet eh~

Reference: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/