UIActivityViewControlloer don't show thumbnail for links - ios

I am developing an iOS app that uses the UIActivityViewController to share some text and a Url. In the Facebook and Twitter services it shows a thumbnail of the site located at the URL.
Unfortunately, the site in question does not look very good at all in the thumbnail. So currently the thumbnail has a negative value in the share dialog. I would either like to prevent the thumbnail from displaying, or supply my own image for the thumbnail. What is the best method to do this?
I would like to avoid having to create my own service and/or dialog.
I have tried adding an image to the item list, however that adds a bunch of services I don't want and adds the Image to the email action and adds the image to a photo album on facebook. The first problem I can get around by blacklisting actions I don't want. And I can make my own UIActivityItemProvider to stop the email problem. However, I have no idea how to prevent the facebook problem. (See How do I customize a UIActivityViewController to show a URL link when posting to facebook and twitter?).
Here is a screenshot of the facebook sharing dialog:

Related

iOS 8 UIActivity: disable specific third-party sharers?

I'm fighting with UIActivityViewController in iOS 8. I'd built a custom Pinterest sharing mechanism which works beautifully in iOS 7 -- specifically, it uploads an image to my server, and then creates a Pin with that image and a URL which I specify. This is the desired functionality.
Now, in iOS 8, Pinterest has implemented its own sharer, which accepts either a URL or an image. If a URL is included in the list of Activity Items, the sharer pops up and asks the user which image s/he wants to share from the page at that URL, and totally ignores the image which is also in the list of Activity Items. If there's no URL, and just the image, then the uploaded pin doesn't include a URL.
In order to resolve this, I need to do one of these things:
Disallow Pinterest's sharer from appearing in the list, so my customized sharer can show up instead;
Somehow specify a Source URL within a pin of an image using Pinterest's sharer (I doubt this is possible);
Remove all the other images from the generated web page. I'd really rather not do this.
Or if all else fails, it would be useful to at least be able to detect if the user has Pinterest's sharer selected to show up in their list.
Does anyone know if there's a way to achieve any of these things?
Just an idea, you could set a custom UIActivitySource on your UIActivityViewController.
Then check the incoming activity type for Pinterest. Then disable that via the exclusions.

Share URL similar to Facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u= but for Houzz

I'm working with Adobe DPS buttons and currently have set up Facebook and Twitter sharing with them. The buttons take a URL and when clicked pull up the share dialogue.
The Facebook taking the following
http://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=(encoded url goes here)
The encoded url being whatever I want to share.
I want to be able to do this with Houzz.
I've found the page on Houzz.com but I don't think I would be able to use this type of URL share option based on what they provided.
http://www.houzz.com/buttonsAndBadges#houzzbutton
Has anyone seen an option for Houzz similar to Facebook's?
After digging through Houzz's bookmarklet, I've found their somewhat difficult-to-pin-down sharer URL.
http://www.houzz.com/imageClipperUpload?imageUrl=(IMAGE-URL-HERE)&title=(PAGE-TITLE-HERE)&link=(PAGE-URL-HERE)
Just as a quick reminder: an image URL is required (unlike Facebook or Twitter, but somewhat like Pinterest) as one of the main points of Houzz is image sharing/scrapbooking.
I hope this helped someone!

Share image/video/album from friend via Facebook Graph API

I'm tackling a problem relating to sharing on facebook, please help me do it.
In my app, a list of video, photo posted by my friends (facebook) appear and I want to add a share button for that. How can I do that?
I can implement a posting method for external picture (another website, not facebook) but only thumbnail will appear, and text doesn't appear like sharing on web browser (big picture, gray vertical line on the left).
the attached image is to represent for sharing post that I want.
Finally, after searching around and testing, I found the solution:
- use grapth api: me/feed
- possible parameters: message and link; link points to the page containing photo/video u want to share while message is your custom message.

Post link to Facebook including app URL scheme - iOS 6

I'm using the UIActivityViewController to share an image and url from within my app.
I'm having trouble formatting the facebook post. I attach an image using a subclassed UIActivityItemProvider and provide the text for the post in the same way.
I want to add a url, but it needs my apps custom url scheme in front of it like this
myurl://image?url=http://imageurl.com
The problem is, when this is posted, only the last half of the url is clickable (from http:// onwards). Which means it doesn't open my app with the url.
Is there another way to do this?
I know I can create an app on Facebook, but how can I tie the two together using the UIActivityViewController?
Thanks
You have 2 options :
Create a simple server-side web service that will redirect from http://yourserver.com/linkToApp/image to myurl://image .
It could even show a different page/preview if the app is not installed/if you're not on an ios device.
Create a facebook app and use "Deep linking" (it will basically do the same for you..)

Can I attach an image to an FBDialog?

I'm writing an iOS app that produces an image, and we'd like the user to be able to post that image to their Facebook wall using the standard facebook dialog.
The Facebook iOS SDK provides a dialog for posting to a user's wall, using the dialog:withParams:andDelegate: method, and you can provide the URL of a picture in the params argument. However, that's no good to me - I want to send off an image that exists only on the phone.
The SDK also provides a way to post an image to a user's wall, using the requestWithGraphPath:andParams:andHttpMethod:andDelegate: method. But that's no good to me either - I want to use the standard dialog.
Is there a way for me to send the image data with an FBDialog?
You need to do a photo upload first, with a graph call to '/me/photos' - this will be in an album that your app will have to create, not an existing one (unless your app created it).
That will return you the photo id, which you can then hit the graph again with a call to that specific id: 'https://graph.facebook.com/RETURNING_PHOTO)ID'
This will return name, picture, source, link (and a bunch of other stuff) - you can then use the picture (which is a thumbnail) in your wall post as the picture and add the URL to the source (big image) or use the link to the photo in the album (link) inside your message text.
Hope this helps,
-J

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