Is it possible to extract data from an existing Facebook game such as Total Domination.
I want to get data such as how many troops I have etc into a spreadsheet automatically.
If it is possible, how can I do it, or where should I find out?
No, game information is not part of Facebook. It is stored on the game own server. The content of an app is private. Only the developer of the game decides how the data is displayed or shared.
The Facebook API only furnishes information about the app properties like name, description, icon, url, developers, etc.
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I am currently attempting to retrieve the news feed from my Facebook home feed to include into an app. I know this used to be able to be done with the API however I have heard that it has since been removed. Is there any other way that you know of that would work or has it been added back into the API? It doesn't make sense why they would remove it.
No, there is no way to get a user’s feed via API. That used to be possible in the very early days (API v1), but has long since been removed.
It doesn't make sense why they would remove it.
Apart from user privacy (I don’t want my posts getting analyzed by some shady app with a developer located in $godKnowsWhere, just because they appeared on the feed of a friend of mine who might be using questionable apps), Facebook considers this a “core feature” – and 3rd-party apps are not supposed to replicate those in the first place. Facebook wants to make money from showing me ads when I view my feed, so allowing any other app to perform the same functionality would just mean loss of revenue.
Say, I wrote a flash game for the Facebook and I want the user to be able to view his playing history (dates, points, highscores...). Do I necessarily have to build my own database for that? Are there any other options? I mean, ANY?
Facebook will provide some general statistics about your app (like the number of views), but if you want something as specific as points and high-score statistics, you will have to use your own database.
You could have your app publishing scores to Facebook, and also read them back from the API: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/scores/
I'm interested in creating an app on an external website that will publish logged-in user's article reads to their timeline. However, I've noticed that when a story is published to timeline, other users who are not connected with your app, are forced to "Add to Timeline". To me, this defeats the purpose because I want users who are not associated with our brand to discover our content and then add it to the timeline if they are a fan of ours. Is there a way to turn off this setting? or is everyone FORCED to add an app to the timeline before they can see the content?
for instance, when I click on a story posted by the Washington Post on someone's timeline, I get this screen -> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1169963/timeline.png when I expected it to just bring me straight to the article. Most users are going to abandon the app at this point and never click on a Washington Post article again
and it looks like people are making browser plugins to stop this from happening:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/01/frictionless-kills-facebook-social-article-readers-dead/
so, is there a way for developers to prevent this all together?
What do you mean about FORCED ? If i give permissions, after app produces timeline posts, it will combine and show as an application box in my timeline. But before it, i can see my friends timeline apps without installing them. Also same in newsticker in news feed...
For example in my profile http://facebook.com/chaylock , you should see my NIVEA Mega Kutu timeline app without interacting app..
I'd like to offer my users the capability of either uploading a photo, or choosing one of their photos on Facebook (not only their profile photo).
Pulling the photo source from the Graph API isn't hard... However, does Facebook authorize us to use their photo link source in our apps, or must we download the photo, store it on our servers, and source them from there?
The safest bet is certainly to download the photo and save it yourself; as with web links I wouldn't trust that a photo link will be valid later.
That said, you then have to deal with deleted/removed photos and cleaning them up in your application.
I'm not a lawyer but it seems pretty clear either method is fine according to their developer policy. Specifically 2.2 states:
You may cache data you receive through use of the Facebook API in
order to improve your application’s user experience, but you should
try to keep the data up to date. This permission does not give you any
rights to such data.
My only concern would be the privacy settings on the photos and whether people would be able to access it via Facebook's url. But if you test it and it works and if the user explicitly selects the photo themselves, that would seem to be fine and wouldn't be much difference then them re-uploading it to your site.
I am currently starting to research a project that wants to use Facebook instead of a log in system.
the brief needs to be able to allow users to have their own customisation settings in a user panel, and also be able to connect with facebook friends within the context of the site.
Am I barking up the wrong tree?
Also, how much of the elements we pull from facebook can be styles our way. My designers is starting concepts before I get to that point of development and I don't want to waste their time designing layouts that can not be achieved.
Facebook allows you to pull a wealth of information. The user has to OK the permission for you app to access his/her Facebook profile, but you can get friends lists and their thumbnail pictures too!
Take a look here for a start:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
Its a bit of work, but worth it. You can pull straight data and store it on your server. According to Facebook, you can only keep the data for 24 hours or so (If I remember correctly) so you will need to "refresh" the data every day or so.