Facebook API - Force facebook to reload cache from your website

FacebookDebugger.php

<?php
	class FacebookDebugger
	{
		/*
		 * https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/using-objects
		 *
		 * Updating Objects
		 *
		 * When an action is published, or a Like button pointing to the object clicked,
		 * Facebook will 'scrape' the HTML page of the object and read the meta tags.
		 * The object scrape also occurs when:
		 *
		 *      - Every 7 days after the first scrape
		 *
		 *      - The object URL is input in the Object Debugger
		 *           http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
		 *
		 *      - When an app triggers a scrape using an API endpoint
		 *           This Graph API endpoint is simply a call to:
		 *
		 *           POST /?id={object-instance-id or object-url}&scrape=true
		 */
		public function reload($url)
		{
			$graph = 'https://graph.facebook.com/';
			$post = 'id='.urlencode($url).'&scrape=true';
			return $this->send_post($graph, $post);
		}

		private function send_post($url, $post)
		{
			$r = curl_init();
			curl_setopt($r, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
			curl_setopt($r, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
			curl_setopt($r, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post);
			curl_setopt($r, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
			curl_setopt($r, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5);
			$data = curl_exec($r);
			curl_close($r);
			return $data;
		}
	}
?>

usage.php

<?php
	$fb = new FacebookDebugger();
	$fb->reload('http://example.com/');
	$fb->reload('http://example.com/foo');
	$fb->reload('http://example.com/bar');
?>

Thank you for this is working for me :)

It's the best way! Very thanks )

Why Fatal error: Class 'FacebookDebugger' not found when load usage.php?

@pinetress1 don't forget to include FacebookDebugger.php in usage.php

I am using WordPress and placed the code above (on line 1-43) in functions.php but did not get the desired results. Does anybody has idea where I am wrong?

how can we use this code in wordpress ?

Save the class php file into your wp theme folder, then in functions.php, add the class usage code and the line with your site url in a new function. Dont forget to add include 'FacebookDebugger.php' before the class is instantiated

Is it possible to implement the same in c#??

Whool! Thank you guy! This helped me a lot! :-)

Is this still valid? I seem to have found that doing a POST via cURL throws an access token error, whereas calling via GET seems to work fine

@mikeskiddle it seems that recently it started throwing a HTTP 400 with the "access token required" message that you referred.
The thing is....with the post method it allowed us to force facebook to scrape and then refresh the graph's cache for the URL....with the get method it won't have the same behaviour :| according to the Facebook's specifications (on July,2017)

Previously, GET /{url} would trigger a scrape if that URL had not been encountered before. With v2.10, these requests will not trigger a scrape nor an update to the Open Graph object.
(...) When making a GET request against a URL we haven't scraped before, we will also omit the og_object field. To trigger a scrape and populate the og_object, issue a POST /{url}?scrape=true. Once scraped, the og_object will remain cached and returned on all future read requests.

We will require an access token for these requests in all versions of the Graph API beginning October 16, 2017.

Exactly:

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2017/07/18/graph-api-v2.10/

Since 16 Oct 2017 the code above shouldn't work anymore. An access token is required. Anyone has any idea how to accomplish that?

I need help fixing this Facebook open graph issue: The following properties are specified on the webpage but NOT supported for the specified 'og:type': article:publisher, article:author, article:tag, article:section, article:published_time

Thanks for the code. However, the image doesn't seem to update. I was able to get the updated Title, Description and other properties excepting the og:image property. Any help here?

thx. i cron post https://graph.facebook.com/
id={URL}&scrape=true&access_token={TOKEN} access token permanent

Hey, I had different cat images and i am changing the og:image when page loads.

<meta property="og:image"       content="http://example.com/images/<?php echo $randomCatImage; ?>" >

When i inspect the image is changing... but when i share or type my url... i am getting same preview (image)...
How to Fetch new scrape information when someone types or shares my url ?

This works really really well and solved our problem with fb caching images.
Thank you so much!

Thank you guys for all the positive feedback!

can confirm this still works in 2020, here a python implementation extending the Facebook Graph SDK

class GraphAPIExt(GraphAPI):

    def scrape_url(self, url, **kwargs):

        assert url, "object URL is required"

        args = {
            "id": url,
            "scrape": True
        }

        args.update(kwargs)

        return self.request("/", method="POST", args=args)

I wrote that code in high school nearly ten years ago (I published it later) and I would never guess that it would be still useful even today.
Thank all of you guys.

Must have a valid access token or a valid url_hmac

can confirm this still works in 2020, here a python implementation extending the Facebook Graph SDK

class GraphAPIExt(GraphAPI):

    def scrape_url(self, url, **kwargs):

        assert url, "object URL is required"

        args = {
            "id": url,
            "scrape": True
        }

        args.update(kwargs)

        return self.request("/", method="POST", args=args)

does this update the image
I've tried another simple approach. get the response but it does not seem to update anything
python code:
res = requests.post(f'{host}/?id={uri}&scrape=true&access_token={token}')

yes, this is what we are using right now in our production environment