How to setup your Facebook page token

Having found that it is possible to generate a Facebook Page Access Token that does not expire here is a clear, step-by-step quide for all those looking to the same:

  1. Make sure you are the admin of the FB page you wish to pull info from
  2. Create a FB App (should be with the same user account that is the page admin). The Facebook app should be created from the developers account https://developers.facebook.com/
  3. Head over to the Facebook Graph API Explorer
  4. On the top right, select the FB App you created from the “Application” drop down list
  5. Click “Get Access Token”
  6. Make sure you add the manage_pages,publish_pages permissions
  7. Convert this short-lived access token into a long-lived one by making this Graph API call: https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=<your FB App ID >&client_secret=<your FB App secret>&grant_type=fb_exchange_token&fb_exchange_token=<your short-lived access token>
  8. Grab the new long-lived access token returned back
  9. Make a Graph API call to see your accounts using the new long-lived access token: https://graph.facebook.com/me/accounts?access_token=<your-long-lived access token>
  10. Grab the access_token for the page you’ll be pulling info from
  11. Lint the token to see that it is set to Expires: Never!

That should do it. You should now have a Facebook Page Access Token that doesn’t expire, unless:

  • You change your Facebook account password
  • You lose admin access for the target page
  • You delete or de-authorize your Facebook App

Any of these will cause the access token to become invalid.

If you are getting (#100) Tried accessing non existing field (accounts) on node type (Page), go to the Access Token Debugger, copy the value of User ID, and use it to replace the “me” part of the URL in step 9.