Publishing an image without a related URL via the LinkedIn API

Question

The LinkedIn Share API states that:

Post must contain comment and/or (content/title and content/submitted-url).

This is a bit confusing, but the consequence is that our app cannot share an image unless it has an associated "article" URL. To a degree, this makes sense, since it seems that the Share API was intended to be used to share two things: 1) simple text status updates, and 2) articles.

This might be enough information to give up, but it appears that the LinkedIn web interface does, indeed, allow an image to be shared directly, without an associated URL.

Using the web interface:

The result:

Clicking on the image displays the image in a popup (lightbox):

So, my question is: The web client, as I have shown, clearly has the ability to share images without associated links/URLs. Is there a way to accomplish the same thing using the LinkedIn API?

Thanks!

Thundershower

Answer 1

I've come to accept the disappointing fact that this is almost certainly just not possible via the API. Boo.

Thundershower

Do you know if this has changed? – Lin

As far as I know, it has not changed, but if you find that it has, please report back here! :) – Thundershower

Update: The solution provided in the previous comment didn't work. – Thundershower

I think the technical "answer" to this is that we need to use Rich Media Shares from the V2 API. The problem with this is that the V2 API appears to be only partially functional/public - it's as if LI got halfway through releasing it and abandoned it. Every request I make to V2 returns permissions errors. Perhaps we need to join one of LI's partner programs? – Thundershower

this has changed, read my answer it works. i just implemented it in my app @Thundershower – Stites

Answer 2

You can provide the URL of the image itself as the submitted-url. This makes the link-preview box link to the image. This might not be ideal, but it works to get the image on the post.

However, LinkedIn has strange behavior with these kinds of messages if there are URLs in the comment itself. If there is one URL in the comment, LinkedIn will remove the URL. If there is more than one URL, LinkedIn will display all URLs in the comment. One of these two behaviors is a bug, I suspect.

Here's an image of what a post looks like when submitted-image-url and submitted-url are the same:

Ophicleide

Thanks, @DecayConstant! Could you provide a screenshot of what the end result will look like? This will help SO'ers know if this is a good option for them. – Thundershower

@Thundershower I added an image of the result. – Ophicleide

Thanks, @DecayConstant! :) – Thundershower

This is the approach we use; I wish it would work more like the "native" post made directly on linkedin.com, but at least it's better than nothing! Thanks again. – Thundershower

@rinogo, use the answer that i've provided – Stites

Answer 3

The accepted answer is outdated. The API has evolved a lot over the past 8 years.

I've been facing this issue for a week and I finally figured out the solution. Here is the code for it in Node. But, you can use the Payload in another language.

      const payload = {
        owner: 'YOUR-LINKEDIN-AUTHOR-URN',
        text: {
          text: 'This is a sample post'
        },
        distribution: {
          linkedInDistributionTarget: {}
        },
        content: {
          contentEntities: [
            {
              entityLocation: 'https://enlear.academy/how-to-build-a-scalable-email-service-using-aws-d404b347a7fb',
              thumbnails: [
                { resolvedUrl: 'https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*a-5BgPfQ7a2Lwe5z.png' }
              ]
            }
          ],
          title: 'Building a Scalable Email Service',
        },
      };

Construct the body using a payload similar to this (just replace your link with my example) and send a POST request to the URL - https://api.linkedin.com/v2/shares.

Additionally attach the Authorization Header with the Bearer Token and attach a second header LinkedIn-Version with the value 202207

For more information, refer the documentation - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/marketing/integrations/community-management/shares/share-api?view=li-lms-unversioned&tabs=http#share-types

Stites