Azure mobile facebook authentication with iPhone HTML5 in app (full screen) mode - iphone

Question

I have an HTML5 application that uses Azure mobile services authentication to login (straight from the example code...provided below). It works fine in all desktop browsers and iPhone 5 in Safari. But from app / full screen mode, it does nothing (doesn't ask for permission to show a popup window like it does in safari and no popup windows shows up) and I can wait forever and nothing happens. If I invoke it a second time, it gives an error saying "Error: Unexpected failure"...perhaps because the 1st attempt is still running? Any help/insight is appreciated.
client.login ("facebook").done(function (results) {
alert("You are now logged in as: " + results.userId);
}, function (err) {
alert("Error: " + err);
});
edited update with more info and 2 potential ideas*
I did some more research and found a site that uses an approach that overcomes this problem and also solves two other side effects with the current Azure mobile approach to authentication. I think the Azure mobile team might be looking to do something similar because there are some hints of other authentication options in the code (although difficult to read and be sure because the minimized code is obsfucated). It might be just a matter of activating these in the code...
The "solution":
Go to http://m.bcwars.com/ and click on the Facebook login. You'll see it works perfectly in iPhone Safari in "app mode" becuase instead of doing a popup, it simply stays in the current browser window.
This approach solves two other problems with the current Azure mobile approach. First, the popup gets interpreted by most browsers as a potential ad and is either blocked automatically (desktop Chrome) ... and the user doesn't know why it's not working...or gives a warning which the user has to approve (iPhone Safari in "browser mode") which is a hassle. And if the user has a popup blocker, it gets more difficult and even more potential for the user not getting it to work properly. The bcwars.com method doesn't have this problem.
Second, in iPhone Safari, when the popup window auto closes, the original page doesn't get focus if there are other browser windows open in Safari. Instead, it's in the smaller/slide mode so they can choose which one to show. If this happens, the user has to go through one more sttep...click on the browser window to activate it and give it focus..again more of a pain and more potential for them to mess up and not do it correctly and need help. The m.bcwars.com doesn't have this problem.
Azure options:
Looking at the Azure mobile code it looks like may already have the solution. I can't read it easliy becuase it's minified/obsfucated, but it seems to have 4 options (including iFrame, etc.) for invoking the authentication, and only 1 (the "less ideal one" of a popup) is being used. An easy solution would be to set a property to allow one of the alternate authentications to work. But I can't read it well enough to figure it out. Another would be to hack the code (temporarily until a fix is put up by Microsoft).
Could I get some help there perhaps?

Answer 1

You can implement an authentication flow with Facebook that doesn't use a popup. The basic idea is to use the 'Web Flow' for doing the login, and once the window return from the login, use the access token to login the user in to Azure Mobile Services.
The Facebook documentation for doing this is here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/login-flow-for-web-no-jssdk/#step2
Some code samples to make it easier for you.
You would start by something like this:
(Remember to replace YOUR_APP_ID and YOUR_URL with something relevant to your site.
function logIn() {
window.location.replace('https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=YOUR_APP_ID&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2FYOUR_URL&response_type=token')
}
This redirects the window to the Facebook page for the user to log in and authorize your app. When the user is done, Facebook will redirect the user back to YOUR_URL given above.
There you can handle the redirect and do the Mobile Services Login with something like this:
function handleLoginResponse() {
var frag = $.deparam.fragment();
if (frag.hasOwnProperty("access_token")) {
client.login("facebook", { access_token: frag.access_token }).then(function () {
// you're logged in
}, function (error) {
alert(error);
});
}
}
In here you parse the access token you get as a URL fragment and pass it as argument to the login call you make to Azure Mobile Services.
This code depends on the jquery BBQ plugin to handle the URL fragment easily.
Hope this solves your problem!