Embed Facebook Post in Body using Shortcodes

This tutorial explains how to create an article with an embedded Facebook post in the body content.

Requirements

For this tutorial you will need both the Python and requests libraries installed.

Procedure

1. Initialize variables

Set the global variables.

import requests
API_DOMAIN = '<your-secure-domain>'
API_KEY = '<your-api-key>'

2. Obtain a shortcode using a media asset URL

This code snippet uses the Scraper API to obtain a shortcode that can be embedded in body content.

facebook_post_url = 'https://www.facebook.com/RebelMouse/posts/2343829539007928'
response = requests.get(
    'https://{}/api/1.3/scraper'.format(API_DOMAIN),
    params={
        'api_key': API_KEY,
        'url': facebook_post_url,
    }
)
response.raise_for_status()
scraper_response = response.json()
print(scraper_response['embed']['shortcode'])

3. Create a draft

Once you have the shortcode, create a new draft using the Drafts API. This new draft will need to have the shortcode as part of its body content.

body_content = '''
     <p>This is a HTML piece that can contain shortcodes</p>
     {}
     <p>This text goes after the embedded FB post</p>
'''.format(scraper_response['embed']['shortcode'])
response = requests.post(
     'https://{}/api/1.3/drafts'.format(API_DOMAIN),
    params={'api_key': API_KEY},
    json={
        'headline': 'Embedded FB post in article content',
        'body': body_content,
    }
)
response.raise_for_status()
draft_api_response = response.json()
print(draft_api_response['id'])

4. Publish the draft

Finally, publish the draft and print its URL.

response = requests.put(
    'https://{}/api/1.3/drafts/{}'.format(API_DOMAIN, draft_api_response['id']),
    params={'api_key': API_KEY},
    json={'action': 'publish'}
)
response.raise_for_status()
draft_api_response = response.json()
print(draft_api_response['post_url'])