App Studio FAQ

From KickApps Documentation

How do I share just the media that is playing in my player instead of the entire widget when someone initiates a share from the share panel?

To do this it helps to understand the two "modes" of syndication built into App Studio widgets:

1. When a widget is powered by a feed with 1 item in it (like a video player set to play a single video on our play pages) it is assumed that you want to share that specific media instead of the widget. The "play page" for that video found in the <link> tag of the feed powering the widget is passed to Facebook and other sites which parse that page for what title, description, thumbnail, and widget to display. The title, description, and other meta data that is shared will be coming directly from the media and not from the widget since this is all data scraped from the play page. *Note:* By default your video play pages use the "Video Player for Video Play Page" widget in the App Studio to render on video play pages and 3rd party sites. You can update this widget or set a new widget as your "video play page" widget via the "Publish to KIT Cloud Social pages" option in the App Studio. Any feeds in this widget will be replaced with the play page specific feed.
2. When the widget contains multiple media like a Video Player powered by a feed with the 10 most recent videos it is assumed that you want to keep the widget whole when sharing. When this type of widget is shared via the syndication panel a "widget homepage" is generated and passed to the 3rd party site. This allows the entire widget to be rendered as is on 3rd party sites like the Facebook's news feed. The "Display Name" and "Description" added to the widget in the App Studio and a snapshot of the widget generated on saving is used for the title and description and thumbnail passed to 3rd party sites.

If your widget fits in #2 but you want to share #1 for the media that is currently playing in your player, you can follow these steps:

1. Open your widget in the App Studio and click on your share button.
2. You should see a "Click: App Container: Open share panel" action in the ACTIONS panel. Double click on it to edit it.
3. In this action you'll see a few optional text input fields that are currently empty. In the "Shared URL" text input put: #{Your Video Player Name in the Layers Panel.selectedItem.url}
4. In the "Shared Title" text input put: #{Your Video Player Name in the Layers Panel.selectedItem.title}
5. If you want to update the panel's title relative to the selected item to make it more clear what you are sharing you can add this update the "Panel Title" input with: Share #{Your Video Player Name in the Layers Panel.selectedItem.title}
6. Test sharing to Facebook and Twitter and you should see it is now posting the selected media.
7. Optional: The embed code in the share panel will continue to share a copy of the entire widget. If you want the embed code to share the single piece of media as well you will have to override the embed code via the "Embed Code:" text area in the "Open share panel" action. Paste a copy of the embed code here for whichever widget you are sharing (could be the same widget). You'll need to pass a feed to this embed code pointing to your media. This can be done by adding this to the "flashvars" part of the embed code: &mediaType_mediaID=#{Your Video Player Name in the Layers Panel.selectedItem.ka::mediaType}_#{Your Video Player Name in the Layers Panel.selectedItem.kickAppsModuleData.id}. Note: You would replace "Your Video Player Name in the Layers Panel" above with the actual name in the layers panel, without quotes.