Facebook Platform News 10/27/09

We've released a few updates to our APIs this week that are aimed at enhancing users' experience with your applications and make building on Facebook easier.

Extending the Comments API

Commenting on content users post to their profiles increases engagement with your sites and applications. To aid in application growth and engagement, we've extended the Comments API methods (comments.get, comments.add, and comments.remove) so they all now take an object_id parameter, which you can specify in place of an XID. The comment FQL table now also takes an object_id as an indexable parameter.

Specifying an object_id allows applications to comment on content such as photos, videos, notes, applications, and posted items. For photos and photo albums object_ids, you must query for the new object_id field in the corresponding FQL tables (photo and album) rather than using the PIDs and AIDs we currently provide, since the namespaces overlap.

Filtering the Stream for Groups

Your applications can now get the stream from Facebook groups, and post to the Walls of groups. You can specify a group ID as a source_id to retrieve the group's stream with stream.get and FB.ApiClient.stream_get, and as a target_id to publish onto the group's Wall with stream.publish, Facebook.streamPublish, and FB.Connect.streamPublish.

Changing Your Canvas Page Name Programmatically

You can now set the canvas_name application property using admin.setAppProperties instead of editing the setting in the Developer application.

We hope you start using these features and we welcome your feedback on the Developer Forum.

Pete, the technical writer on the Platform team, likes spreading the news.