Recently, it became necessary for me to add a "share on facebook" feature to a project I am working on. A quick web search for "facebook share api" turned up the Facebook Share API that gives example code for for formatting a URL to share data on Facebook.

The ony problem the Facebook share code is that the code doesn't work. A custom title for what is being shared get's overridden by the title of the page at the given URL. A bit more digging with my internet shovel turned up some information about URL and Title being sent as part of an array and the URL would be sent as p[url] and the Title would be sent as p[title].

With that in mind, I wrote the following JavaScript function to format a URL and Title and share them on Facebook.

function shareOnFacebook(share_title,share_url) {
    //encode the share_title
    t=encodeURIComponent(share_title);
    //encode the share_url
    u=encodeURIComponent(share_url);
    //determine the target url to open
    target_url='http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?s=100&p[title]='+t+'&p[url]='+u+'&t='+t;
    //open the target
    window.open(target_url,'share','toolbar=0,status=0,width=600,height=400');
}

Now quit reading, and go share some useless information of Facebook.

By the way, there is a 100 character limit for the title.

Update June 18 2010: Since both images and description have been asked for... The following function will allow the user to also set the image and description (which facebook call subject for some asinine reason)

function shareOnFacebook(title,url,desc,image) {
    t=encodeURIComponent(title);
    d=encodeURIComponent(desc);
    u=encodeURIComponent(url);
    i=encodeURIComponent(image);
    share_url='http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php';
    share_url+='?s=100&p[title]='+t+'&p[summary]='+d+'&p[url]='+u;
    share_url+='&p[images][0]='+i;
    share_url+='&t='+t+'&e='+d;
    var myWindow = window.open(share_url, 'sharer', 'toolbar=0,status=0,width=626,height=436');
}

Well there you have it, I hope it works for you.

PS. If you are so inclined, you could buy me a cup of coffee. hint hint wink wink