FBCMD: Command Line for Facebook

What's better than the command line and Facebook? How about combining the two?

By Ken Hess
Monday, May 16th, 2011
Just because you’re stuck at the command line all day long doesn’t mean that you can’t participate in the awesomeness of social networking. You can enjoy both with FBCMD, the command line Facebook applications. Back in February, I wrote Tweeting from the Command Line with Twyt, which, as you remember, was an article covering the command line Twitter client, Tywt. Now, you can have your Facebook and the convenience of the command line to satisfy your social networking addiction. And, better still is that at the command line, no one will ever suspect that you’re Facebooking. Power to the people! The command line-using people, that is.

The Basics

There are a few prerequisites for installing the command line Facebook application, FBCMD. PHP 5.x is a requirement, since the application is a single PHP file. You can install php5 via any method you wish but, in my experience, I had to install php5-cli, php5-gd, and php5-mysql to use this application. Your experience and mileage may vary.

Connect to the FBCMD and download the PHP file or grab it easily via curl.

$ curl -O https://github.com/dtompkins/fbcmd/raw/master/fbcmd_update.php
And, run the following two commands to complete this very simple installation.

$ sudo php fbcmd_update.php sudo fbcmd update utility [version 2.91] http://fbcmd.dtompkins.com/update php fbcmd_update.php install fbcmd update utility [version 2.91] http://fbcmd.dtompkins.com/update ..................... Update: COMPLETE! fbcmd version: [none] --> [1.0-beta5-dev1] Note: fbcmd_update.php is now at [/usr/local/lib/fbcmd/fbcmd_update.php] so you can remove the old one at [/home/khess/fbcmd_update.php] type fbcmd to begin
As…