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Key Concepts

Core Concepts › Open Graph › Key Concepts

Building an Open Graph app gives you the opportunity to deeply integrate into the core Facebook experience, including Timeline, News Feed, and Ticker.

In this document we will explain the following concepts:

If you want to start building an Open Graph app now, please refer to our tutorial.

Actions and Objects

Actions and objects are the building blocks of Open Graph. Actions are the high-level "interactions" users can perform in your app. Objects represent "entities" that users can act on in your app. Previously, users were able to connect to objects in your app via the like action. Now, you can model user interactions with custom actions and objects for richer connections with your users.

First you must define your types of actions and objects in the App Dashboard. For example, a running app may define "Routes" and "Marathons" as relevant object types, and "Run" as the action type in the App Dashboard. A cooking app may define "Recipe" and "Menu" as object types, and "Cook" as the action type.

Once your action types and object types are defined in the App Dashboard, you need to create and publish your objects to Open Graph. Open Graph Objects are simply web pages with <meta> tags containing Open Graph information in the <head> section of the page. These tags describe the type of the object, the name of the object and other key information. For example, to create the "Stuffed Cookie" object for a recipe app, you should add <meta> tags to specify the object type as a recipe, its title as “Stuffed Cookies” and the URL to its representative image.

Open Graph Mechanics

When users take an action in your app, such as cook a "Stuffed Cookie", the app invokes a Graph API call to publish a new instance of the cook action that connects the user with the "Stuffed Cookie" object. This is accomplished by issuing a HTTP POST to the user’s /me/myapp:cook connection with the URL of the recipe object. Facebook will then crawl the web page representing the object, read the metadata, and connect the object to the user via the action.

The diagram below illustrates the process:

  1. User takes an action in the app, such as cook a recipe
  2. App invokes a HTTP POST to the Graph API end-point /me/action:object=Object_URL
  3. Facebook will crawl the object webpage, read its meta tags and connect the object to the user via the action.

Social Channels

With a single API, Open Graph actions can appear on every Social Channel.

News Feed and Ticker

When Open Graph actions are published, these activities may appear in users' News Feeds or their friends' News Feeds & Ticker.

Timeline

Timeline represents a user's identity on Facebook. A user's Timeline highlights the most important life moments and apps are now able to be part of a user's Timeline. In the same way how standard Facebook activities appear on a user's Timeline, a user's activity on third-party apps will appear as Reports and Aggregations that will be also part of the user's Timeline and identity on Facebook.

Aggregations and Reports

Aggregations are summary stories on Timeline that are defined by your application to showcase the Open Graph activities of a user in a structured and interesting way. You can customize your application's Aggregations and preview their look and feel with sample data in the App Dashboard.

When an app defines multiple Aggregations, these may appear on a user's Timeline as a Report. A Report is a collection of aggregations on a user's Timeline. Reports are shown for time periods in which a user has activity, and sufficient connections with your app. This provides a consistent viewing experience and makes it easier for users to digest data from your app.

Timeline Views

Timeline Views are app-specific views on a user's Timeline. When a user installs your Open Graph app and publishes actions, an app-specific View will be available on at the top of the user's Timeline.

Next Steps

Updated about 3 weeks ago
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