Facebook Messenger API : An active access token must be used to query information about the current user

Question

I'm following the development guide here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/quickstart

I've setup my server and the webhooks. When I try to make a POST request to the facebook graph api, I get the following response:

{"response":{"statusCode":400,"content":"{\"error\":{\"message\":\"An active access token must be used to query information about the current user.\",\"type\":\"OAuthException\",\"code\":2500,\"fbtrace_id\":\"GHWSIH8OBGm\"}}","headers":{"www-authenticate":"OAuth \"Facebook Platform\" \"invalid_request\" \"An active access token must be used to query information about the current user.\"","access-control-allow-origin":"*","pragma":"no-cache","cache-control":"no-store","facebook-api-version":"v2.6","expires":"Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT","content-type":"text/javascript; charset=UTF-8","x-fb-trace-id":"GHWSIH8OBGm","x-fb-rev":"2296043","vary":"Accept-Encoding","x-fb-debug":"4KebPKo5T+Al/88Z7DWtZ8ROawIB3cZFLp65OVi/soTB6hOHstvXox5czalYj45FdI+2r+MQwNh9PHur5uGSbQ==","date":"Wed, 20 Apr 2016 23:45:26 GMT","transfer-encoding":"chunked","connection":"keep-alive"},"data":{"error":{"message":"An active access token must be used to query information about the current user.","type":"OAuthException","code":2500,"fbtrace_id":"GHWSIH8OBGm"}}}}

I'm using the Page Access Token provided by the apps page. I used the fb token validator to validate that the token has not expired.

I appreciate any help with this.

Answer 1

The error message shows that you were trying to query the information about the current user communicating with your char bot. The API end point which serves the user information is:

https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/USER_ID_HERE?fields=first_name,last_name,profile_pic&access_token=PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE

And as per the documentation, you need to make a GET request (not POST) to this end point.

You can personalize the conversation using the person's name or profile pic from the User Profile API. In order to get this information, make a GET request to https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/?fields=first_name,last_name,profile_pic&access_token=. Read more details in the Send API reference. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/implementation#user_profile_api