Messenger not displaying images in Generic template in mobile App

Question

I'm sending Facebook a structured message with a URL to an image file (the file is in Amazon S3). The message is structured according to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/send-api-reference/generic-template (Generic template).

The message is being received and shown just fine - but the image doesn't appear in the mobile iOS Messenger app (I didn't test Android). It DOES appear in the web version of Messenger.

Anyone know what can cause this?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This happens in iOS Messenger app when there is no subdomain in the URL of the image.

In my case, I change from https://example.com/image.jpg to https://mysub.example.com/image.jpg and the problem is solved.

Answer 2

This happens because Facebook caches images by their URL. Let's say you're trying to send an image at URL http://example.org/image.png in your generic template.

When you make a call to the Send API, FB attempts to loads the image from http://example.org/image.png. When you send the same image in the future FB uses their cached version instead of reloading it from your endpoint. If this endpoint fails to serve the image correctly at the first send, FB will continue to cache / render a blank image.

I encountered this and fixed it by doing the following:

1. Make sure my image could be accessed at http://example.org/image.png

2. Add a URL parameter for the image_url in your call to FB API. Use http://example.org/image.png?time=1524606955198

Hopefully your image starts showing up.