Can Corona enable (limited) Facebook sharing on Android via native.showPopup()?

Social Media
#41

<phpedinei>: The good folks at Corona have, sadly, been repeatedly reluctant to fix these sharing problems.

In the Android Facebook sharing situation, <davebollinger> noted in November it would be only a handful of code. But there’s been no response in this thread since then.

In the iOS sharing situation, there are 10 lines of ObjC code that need to be added – to support a feature that is the most-requested on Corona’s official request forum. But a few days ago Walter and Brent both pointedly declined to say it would be added: http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/53371-supporting-ios-modal-share-action-sheet-airdrop-print-add-to-home-screen-add-bookmark-add-to-reading-list-etc/

Given this reluctance over multiple months to add two trivial sharing features, my guess is Corona management views their absence as either unimportant or a way to convince developers to pay considerably more for Enterprise. That’s their right, of course, but it would be nice if developers were told so forthrightly.

#42

Looking forward to having this feature.

#43

We published a CoronaCards blog showing how to do this with Swift  a  couple of weeks ago.  This one feature doesn’t have a lot of votes on the feedback site and while it’s trivial to implement in native (Heck I was able to do it with Swift and native isn’t my area of expertise), it still needs to get scheduled into the engineer’s work load.  But with the work done in another thread, where many feature requests would be solved with this one solution, I think we have gotten this on the radar.  I can’t promise when, because we have a lot on our plate right now, but it’s at least there.

Now for it being just 10 lines of code.  Perhaps for a pure implementation that might be true, but for use it’s going to be quite a bit more work.  The only logical place for this is in native.showPopup(“social”) with a service of “share” to match the same thing on Android.  However, the social plugin is built around a completely different way of dealing with social services (albeit an iOS 6 way).  That code cannot just have this code easily slapped in and have it work.  It would be a very ugly hack to do so.  Its quite doable, but it’s not the low hanging fruit that people assume this will be.

Of course, more and more votes at the feedback site (http://feedback.coronalabs.com ) will help drive home the need for this. 

Rob

#44

Good news on the iOS front! Brent from Corona just posted an update in the other thread saying the iOS share action sheet will be supported within the next few days:

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/53371-supporting-ios-modal-share-action-sheet-airdrop-print-add-to-home-screen-add-bookmark-add-to-reading-list-etc/#entry282502

Rob, I suspect you had something to do with this, and I thank you for making this happen. It’s made my week.

May I press my luck and ask if the currently-broken Facebook sharing on Android can be fixed as well? We’ve been talking about it in this thread since November. From Corona’s perspective, allowing Facebook sharing of URLs and images for Pro subscribers will make that paid option more attractive, and hopefully bring in enough extra revenue to give Rob and Brent a nice spring quarterly bonus. :slight_smile:

#45

Engineering has stated on multiple times that this is a well known and documented issue with Facebook and until Google and Facebook iron out the issue, there isn’t anything we can do.

Rob

#46

Rob, thanks for your response. But I’m afraid you replied to a question that is not the topic of this thread. You are correct that Facebook has long taken the position that: “Our API does not support pre-filling the message for users” https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/332619626816423/

What this thread is asking for is something different. We’re asking to be able to use the standard Android share menu with Facebook for URLs and images when there is no pre-filled text.

Other Android apps can do that just fine. I gave an example earlier in this thread. <davebollinger> gave others. There is no reason Corona-built Android apps should be crippled with broken sharing, especially when Facebook usage is growing quarter-by-quarter. This is decidedly not a “well known and documented issue with Facebook” – it’s a choice by Corona.

Rob, you said last fall in this thread that “I’m waiting on a response from Engineering” but then went dark. Can you check with engineering now, perhaps, and let us know what the answer is? Now that iOS sharing is being fixed, it would be great if Corona would correctly implement Facebook sharing for URLs and images via native.showPopUp().

#47

Engineering is looking into a work around.

#48

Thanks, Rob! I appreciate your help with both this and iOS sharing. Much obliged.

#49

Any update on Android Facebook sharing fixes? does any daily build have fixes yet?

#50

I haven’t seen it in any daily build release notes, and I’ve been checking.

It’s been nearly half a year since this thread began – and Corona SDK-built apps remain the only ones that are crippled by being unable to share with Facebook via the Android chooser. I’m astonished that, as  <davebollinger> noted in November 2014, it would be “only a handful of code” if Corona staff chose to fix it, but nothing has been released to date.

#51

Yeah I saw that same post, thought it strange that the Largest social network and the most widespread device(Android) still do not play nice together on Corona, I am sure there are many ways the problem could be fixed. I get a feeling that most everyone at Coronalabs owns a Mac and an IOS device.  Whereas I do not own a Mac or an iOS device.

It does seem that stating some problem between Google and Facebook does not seem to hold back other cross platform dev frameworks.  I know the devs are extremely busy folks. but Facebook is probably the number one item when it comes to sharing things with friends etc.

#52

Tim: There is no inherent problem in Android when sharing URLs or images with Facebook. Other frameworks do it. Corona’s documentation implies there is (“On Android, this plugin does not support Facebook due to a bug…”) – but fails to note that the bug is in Corona SDK, not Facebook.

You can do it on Xamarin; I think their method is called actionbarsherlock. You can also use Phonegap’s social sharing plugin to share with Facebook on Android: https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SocialSharing-PhoneGap-Plugin With Appcelerator, you use shareIntent: https://developer.appcelerator.com/question/149385/sharing-image-via-androidintent

Yes, Corona developers are busy folks, but there will always be other things to do. I expect we’d all be understanding if it took a week or two or even a month or two to fix this bug in their SDK. But now that we’re approaching the half-year mark with zero resolution, well, I’m sorry if I sound frustrated, but I am…

#53

Update:  The fix has passed code review and its waiting to have the production plugin built and put on the server.  The team is tracking a bug with plugins right now, so once they have that bigger problem solved, then the fix will go up.

Rob

#54

Wow! Thanks, Rob. That is good news. My frustration is now rapidly diminishing!

#55

Good news: Facebook sharing on Android is fixed. It is now possible to share URLs with Facebook on Android via the social popup with daily build 2015.2616 (and perhaps earlier, though I haven’t checked).

Alas, sharing local images with Facebook on Android via the social popup does not work. It is true that it’s possible to upload the image to a server and then share that URL, but that requires more network usage and remote storage, adds a delay, etc. Facebook allows sharing local images as long as text isn’t prefilled – the Photo app does that, for instance.

Still, thank you, Rob, for pushing this through. It solves 90% of my problems. I will refrain from bugging you about the remaining 10%!

I will think of a new Bi-Rite ice cream challenge going forward…

#56

Alas, if that’s the case, then what seems “90% fixed” to you will still seem “100% broke” to others (like me) that just want to share a local image (no text)

#57

Yep, I suspect that’s the case for others as well. That’s why I took the time to test local image sharing and why I explicitly noted that it does not work.

I encourage Corona to fix this, and I would encourage you to continue to ask them to do so. But I, personally, am now going to spend my efforts to persuade Corona to fix things on other areas (widgets, broken Instagram sharing on iOS, etc.).

#58

In everything I’ve read, you an only provide links to Facebook will grab that URL and pull a photo a descriptive text from the URL.

Rob

#59

Technically this is a plugin change, so you don’t need 2616 or later.  But that said, we broke plugins from 2603 - 2615, so you pretty much need 2616 to solve the “plugin” problem.  But to be fair if you have 2602 or earlier back to 2511 will work too.

Rob

#60

>provide links to Facebook will grab that URL and pull a photo a descriptive text from the URL

Rob: You’re certainly right that if you have a news article, website, etc. URL, the process you describe works. But that’s not suitable for image sharing when there’s just a JPG or PNG image without descriptive text for Facebook to extract. And also it requires that images be stored remotely vs. local image sharing; that is not a Facebook requirement and other Android apps can share local images with Facebook without a problem.

Ack! I said I will refrain from bugging you about the remaining 10%, and I’ve already relapsed. My apologies.