Can't log in to facebook accounts using pidgin

Question

I happen to have two facebook accounts and I used to chat on both of them using pidgin. Everything was working alright, until today, when I couldn't connect to one of my accounts. A Server closed the connection error was being displayed. My other account could log-in from pidgin just fine. But just a moment ago that other account as well failed to connect to facebook displaying an Internal server error. Did facebook completely withdraw support for XMPP chat? In that case is there any way to chat on facebook using pidgin or any other third party software?

Solution 1

Edit: I've noticed that my answer below is outdated. The installation method has changed. Anyone interested in a solution to the problem should just go to the page https://github.com/jgeboski/purple-facebook and follow the instuctions written there. Therefore, my original post is useless now.

The original post: I ran into the same problem this morning and I've just found a solution here: https://github.com/jgeboski/purple-facebook

It will add new Facebook protocol to Pidgin that works for me.

1. Go to the page below and download the latest purple-facebook-*.tar.gz https://github.com/jgeboski/purple-facebook/releases
2. Follow the steps written on the first page above under Building and Installing on linux and other platforms. It was quite difficult for me to compile it. I had to install some missing programs via Synaptic, I'm not sure which were really needed, however you are going to need libjson-glib-dev for sure. That was the last thing I needed to successfully configure it.
3. Scroll up to Basic usage and follow the last steps.

That should be it. Please, let us know how it went!

Solution 2

James Geboski is now providing builds for Debian & Ubuntu, so it is now as simple as:

1. add the repository as source and install purple-facebook
2. restart pidgin
3. Edit account changing the protocol to Facebook and removign @chat.facebook.com from the username

Full instructions are here purple-facebook Installing on *NIX wiki page.

Solution 3

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/chat

On April 30, 2014, facebook announced the deprecation of the XMPP Chat API as part of the release of Platform API v2.0.

After April 30th, 2015 apps will no longer be able to access the service or API. This includes both access to chat.facebook.com and the xmpp_login permission.

facebook recommend people access Facebook Messages on the desktop via Facebook.com or Messenger.com.

Comments

[xangua]

Did facebook completely withdraw support for XMPP chat? They closed the 1.0 api since April 30, so probably they are starting to shut out down.

[David Foerster]

Possible duplicate How to grant application access for Facebook account

[guyfromfl]

This worked great just wanted to give the packages I had to install to get running on Xubuntu 14.04: sudo apt-get install pidgin-dev gfire libjson-glib-dev Hope that helps someone.

[David Foerster]

@guyfromfl: Can you suggest an edit to the answer with that information, please?

[guyfromfl]

@DavidFoerster I edited the answer above but it was rejected..........

[guyfromfl]

I tried this fix on another box and it works great

[Jiří Doubravský]

and Empathy aslo works with faceboook

[cprn]

@JiříDoubravský no it doesn't.