Social Network Connection Field for ACF / WordPress

ACF/WordPress plugin to support publication retrieval from social networks.

I’m publishing this here because it might be useful to others, but USE OF THIS SCRIPT IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. I accept no liability from its use.

This WordPress mu-plugin adds an ACF field type which asks for connection parameters for chosen network, connect, authenticate, and retrieve last publications.

This plugin is aimed at website developers and doesn’t provide any front-end rendering.

As I’m using this on lots of my clients websites, I’m really willing to improve its security, reliability and its features. Contact me if you need support, I’d be pleased to help and get feedback.

Supported networks :

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• Youtube

Each field asks for connection information needed to retrieve the posts, for example the Facebook field asks for:

• API version
• App ID
• App Secret
• Target

A call to get_field returns an associative array of the retrieved last posts, with each item containing following keys:

• network: Network name, facebook, twitter, etc.
• url: URL of the post on the social network
• date: Publication date of the post (DateTime object)
• thumb: Array with following keys:
  • src: Thumbnail URL
  • width: Width of the thumbnail
  • height: Height of the thumbnail
  • srcset: Alternative URLs when available
• caption: Associated text of the post

Example of displayed fields:

Installation

Composer

In your composer.json, add the repository:

{
    "repositories": [
        { "type": "vcs", "url": "https://github.com/jerome-rdlv/social-network" }
    ]
}

then:

 composer require social-network:dev-master

Manual

Drop the plugin folder in your wp-content/mu-plugins/ directory, and require it from another mu-plugin like wp-content/mu-plugins/index.php:

require_once __DIR__ .'/social-network/social-network.php`;

This plugin has dependencies so if you chose manual installation you must run composer install in plugin folder.

Configuration

Configuration needed for each social network.

Facebook

1. Create an App on developer.facebook.com, the account you use doesn’t matter BUT the owner account of the target page must appear in App Roles / Roles screen as Administrators, Developers or Testers (I recommand this last one if the App account is not the owner account of the target page).
2. Set website domain in App Settings (App Domains field)
3. Click + Add Platform / Website and set Site URL
4. Click + App Product / Facebook Login
5. In Facebook Login Settings set Valid OAuth redirect URIs (https://xxxxx.xxx/wp-admin/ URL of the website)
6. On App Dashboard, get App ID and App Secret and fill the corresponding inputs of your Social Network field

Authentication step (when using the connect button) must be done with the owner account of the target page, otherwise it wont work.

Facebook App should stay in development status.

Instagram

Only target is needed, it is the identifier that appears at the end of the Instagram URL:
https://www.instagram.com/xxxxxxx

Pinterest

Target is the complete URL of the target page.

Twitter

1. Create an App on apps.twitter.com, the account you use doesn’t matter
2. Set Callback URL (/wp-admin/ URL of the website)
3. In Keys and Access Tokens tab, get API Key and API Secret and fill the corresponding inputs of your Social Network field

YouTube

Todo

• Improve this doc with installation and configuration information
• Internationalization
• Add support for Google+

Compatibility

This ACF field type is compatible with ACF 5 only.