How to "Like" facebook content externally

Question

So I have been playing around with the facebook like button but I have run into a problem. I have a facebook page about some charity work I'm doing here:

http://www.facebook.com/Adam.Holmes.Climbs.Kilimanjaro.

I also have a web page that has pretty much the same information on it. Within this web page I have a facebook like button so that users can like the page as seen here:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/.

Now my issue is with a seperate button. Within the facebook page I have added images of which some users have "liked" and commented etc. I have now placed those same images on my web page where I would like to add a facebook like button for each image and hence displaying all the likes that the image has on facebook. I have plugged many different links into the like button but none of them seem to work. I have tried a) the url of the page. b) the url of the image. c) random bits and bats manipulating different url's.

I attempted to look through the javascript source code but it is much too complicated for my understanding. I know that a function fc_click() is called from the button which further calls another function, and not long after that I get lost, and have not found what url is used.

So I guess my question is, what is the url to be placed in the "like" script so that I can use the like button externally to facebook?

If anymore info is needed, please say so.

Thank you very much :)

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UPDATE: I have been trying all different combination's or URL's and still having no luck. The object for one of the "Like" buttons is an object in the graph i.e. Here is the object I want to like. but none of these links are working. Maybe facebook are restricting this as it is simple to use the url of the page and it works fine, just not individual items.

May I add again that I need the link that is to be placed in the tag and not just to be able to retrieve a count of the likes and comments etc. I also started a topic on the facebook developer forums here but no-one has replied with a solution.

Thanks again.

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UPDATE 2: As pointed out by "Myles Gray" the code is actually rendered in the HTML as:

<label onclick="this.form.like.click();">

I'm not sure if there is a way to access the form from an external page since is wouldn't have the correct this reference. Is anybody able to shed some light on whether this can be done, and if so, how? Surely if this can be done, having the correct reference to this would allow me to like content externally.

Answer 1

I don't think getting a Facebook like button on a piece of content that's not a page is possible with <fb:like>. To test this out, I tried a couple things on a photo I posted on my own wall. As you figured out, none of the URLs work.

That said, you can build your own like button. With the Graph API, you can pull objects from your own feed with /me/feed. The easiest thing would probably be using images from the feed; if you hosted the image you'd need a mapping table back to objects on your feed. Each object from your feed will have a Like counter.

Update

Reread the post and it looks like you don't want the user to have to log in. The Graph API can be called from the server side. As you're accessing your own feed, you just need to give your app offline permissions to your own feed, and the current user won't have to log in.

Update 2

It appears /POST_ID/likes only works on posts - I get "app must be on whitelist" on anything else.