Currently I’m using a couple of community based websites and am looking to add into the node creation flow in Drupal an option to share a node you have just created on Facebook. The process would be
Create node > Node (add) form
Submit
Share to Facebook (popup window)
View node
I’ve looked into downloading and writing modules for this but I don’t think it’s really necessary. The share widget module is good for offering sharing of nodes to multiple social media sites, so I’ll leave that on the node.tpl.php page so people can share nodes they read, but I want to add it as an option into the flow of creating content.
Facebook offers this page:
http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.creativebirmingham.com
Where the u variable is the page you’re sharing. So now I just need to add a user journey into the node creation flow to include a popup link to that page (maybe in a thickbox window) once the node if created. Should not take too long, I hope.
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The easiest way I have found to do this is to use the Rules module and a set message. Basically you set up a Rule for when content is published and the action to display a set message offering you the chance to share on facebook. You then add a link in the message to the facebook share page shown above and use the replacement pattern for node id [node:nid] to add the node id to the end of the URL in your link code. Simplest way, but not the most sophisticated. I will experience with some thickbox options shortly.
Now I’ve used thickbox, and a few Drupal arguments in order to open a thickbox window when a node is created with a call to share on Facebook. It still uses the Rules module but to redirect to the node that has been created with an extra argument in the URL, i.e. node/40/[argument]
This argument is used by an if statement in the page template in order to trigger the thickbox popup. Variables of the URL are passed to a link graphic in the popup which when clicked then shares the page on Facebook. Simple.