Update Facebook status using R?

Question

Is it possible to update my facebook status from an R session?

EDIT 1: Reading the responses thus far, I would like to point out that I\'m simply interested if a package

Answer 1

NB: The following only successfully logs you into facebook. I don't know why the status update at the end doesn't work, but maybe it is still of some value. It is based on a blog post over at Baratttalo back in March and which I thought would pass time on a friday afternoon.

I wasn't going to reply to this, but looking at some of the other responses and seeing as you helped me over at mathoverflow, I figured I'd give it a shot.

you'll need to install the RCurl and XML packages from http://www.omegahat.org/ (it's a pretty cool website to look at even just for fun i think).

Anyway copy and paste this:

library(RCurl)
library(XML)

log.into.facebook <- function(curl, id) {
  curlSetOpt( .opts = list(postfields = paste('email=', URLencode(id$login.email), '&pass=', URLencode(id$login.password), '&login=', URLencode('"Login"'), sep=''), 
                    post = TRUE,
                    header = FALSE,
                    followlocation = TRUE,
                    ssl.verifypeer = FALSE,
                    cookiejar = 'my_cookies.txt', 
                    cookiefile = 'my_cookies.txt',                                                                          
                    useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3'), curl = curl) 
  u <- "https://login.facebook.com/login.php?m&next=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Fhome.php"             
  doc <- getURL(u, curl = curl)
  return(doc)
}

get.update.stutus.form.id <- function(curl, doc) {
  curlSetOpt( .opts = list(post = FALSE), curl = curl)
  doc <- getURL("http://m.facebook.com/home.php" , curl = curl)
  html <- htmlTreeParse(doc, useInternal = TRUE)

  # this gets the post_form_id value
  form.id.node <- getNodeSet(html, '//input[@name="post_form_id"]')
  form.id <- sapply(form.id.node, function(x) x <- xmlAttrs(x)[[3]])

  # we'll also need the exact name of the form processor page
  form.num.node <- getNodeSet(html, '//form[@method="post"]')
  form.num <-  sapply(form.num.node, function(x) x <- xmlAttrs(x)[[1]])
  form.num <- strsplit(form.num, "/")[[1]][3]

  return(list(form.id = form.id, form.num = form.num))
}

# This function doesn't work. I would love to know why though as it 'looks' right to me
update.status <- function(doc, curl, id) {
  form <- get.update.stutus.form.id (curl, doc)

  curlSetOpt( .opts = list(post = TRUE,
                    postfields = paste('post_form_id=', form$form.id, '&status=', URLencode(id$status), '&update=', URLencode('"Update status"'), sep = '')), 
              curl = curl)
  u <- paste("http://m.facebook.com", form$form.num, sep = "/")
  doc <- getURL(u, curl = curl)
  return(doc)
}

and here's how you use the functions above (change id values to your log in details)

id <- list()
id$status <- "Hello world!"
id$login.email <- "YOUR LOGIN EMAIL"
id$login.password <- "YOUR LOGIN PASSWORD"

# log into facebook, seems to work fine
curl <- getCurlHandle()
doc <- log.into.facebook(curl, id)


# this is the bit that doesn't work, no idea why though. 
update.status(doc, curl, id)

Hope that helps a little bit, maybe it will give you an idea. Also, I think the question you asked is fine, maybe just be a bit more specific next time and so maybe you'll avoid some of the comments you've gotten here :-)

Tony Breyal

P.S. I think there IS an api for all this somewhere, but if all you're interested in is updating the status, I quite like the idea of using the twitteR package and linking the updates to facebook.