today facebook revealed their new api to update user’s status, and i am quite certain that it will play a vital role in the massive “status” market that is controlled by twitter. lets see how we can update status of any users of your application using this new API called “status_set()”. first thing is to update your facebook client library from this link to make thie api available to your application. and oh, one more thing to note which is very important infact. your users must allow extended permissions for “status_update” before you can do it.

here is the code. first it asks for user’s permission to update his/her status directly from this application. if user grants the permission – we will display a form to our user. then the rest is just hitting the submitting button with new status

<?php
include_once("config.php");
if (!$facebook->api_client->users_hasAppPermission("status_update")){
echo '<fb:prompt-permission perms="status_update" next_fbjs="greet()">Let us update your status from this application</fb:prompt-permission>';
$visibility = "none";
}
else
$visibility = "block";

if(isset($_POST['status']))
{
    $facebook->api_client->users_setStatus($_POST['status']);
    echo "<p>Your status has been updated</p>";
}
?>
<div id="statusdiv" style="display:<?=$visibility;?>;">
    <form method="POST">
        Please update your status:<br/>
        <input type="text" name="status" /> <br/>
        <input type="submit" value="change status" />
    </form>
</div>

<script>
function greet()
{
    var session = "<?=$facebook->api_client->session_key;?>";
    document.getElementById("statusdiv").setStyle("display","block");
    new Dialog().showMessage("Info","Thank you for granting us this permission! Now you can update your facebook status directly from here.");
}

</script>

here is the sequence

screenshot 1: default view, before granting permission

screenshot 2: permission dialogue, asking for the authorization

screenshot 3: status update form

screenshot 4: confirmation

so this is it! pretty easy, eh?