In my physical store, I have a few tablets available in which I use to obtain shoppers' email addresses. I'll leave them up on a simple web page where they just enter their email address to join my companies email mailing list.
I would like to add the ability for these individuals to also 'Like' my company on Facebook without actually logging into Facebook. My thoughts are that they will not want to log into Facebook via a shared machine due to security concerns and also the added time to log on will deter them from even adding their email address to begin with.
Here is what i am thinking...I was hoping to send the 'Like' update to their account based on the email address that they provided without actually loggin on. Can this be achieved?
Thanks for your time.
No, the user must be logged in to send requests to facebook on their behalf
Related
For my own gmail account, I have multiple email addresses associated with it. For example, I have an email address from my university that is associated with my gmail, and I can send emails from my gmail as if they are coming from my university email address.
I'm reading up on the Google APIs, and I see that I can get a user's gmail address, but can I also get any other email address that is associated with their gmail account?
When a user logs in to my site, I'd like to present them with a list of the gmail-associated email addresses and let them select the one they would like to use.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for the answers, but I don't think any of them answers the question. I've been playing with Google's OAuth playground. It is strange that I can get lots of very personal information (a list of a user's contacts and even received emails) but I can't get the user's alternative email addresses.
Your description is a little vague. Are you talking about send-as alias accounts or alternate email accounts?
Send-as Alias
Either way, you can interact with the send-as accounts here: Manage Send-as Alias
Alternate Emails via Admin SDK
As for alternate email accounts, they can be accessed via:
Admin SDK: https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/v1/guides/manage-user-aliases?hl=en
Google Apps Script: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/reference/gmail/gmail-app#getAliases()
Additional info here on how the accounts work.
Email addresses associated with your account
Alternate email addresses and other Google products
Connect other email accounts to your Google Account
Federated Login
Also, I'm not exactly sure how you are trying to incorporate this functionality into your site but another area I recommend checking out is Federated Login for Google Account Users. This might also provide you with the functionality you seek.
Using federated login (also known as federated identity), your website
or application can allow visitors to sign in using their Google user
accounts. Federated login frees users from having to set up separate
login accounts for different websites, and frees you from the task of
implementing login authentication measures.
It has been a while since the question was asked. You can use the Google People API to get a user's primary email address and aliases. Here's the documentation. The scope you need to use is: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/user.addresses.read
This will return all the email addresses for the user and also tell you which is the primary one.
If you use OAuth to have your users sign-in with their Google accounts (with or without G+) the user will be prompted (by Google) to select which of their accounts they wish to authorize your application to use:
https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2Login
So to directly answer your question, I'm not aware of an API to return that list of users - however you shouldn't need to, Google will take care of this before returning to your application.
If your user is already logged in, and you wish to give them the ability to change the Google account they are using, I believe it is possible to prompt them again to select the account they are interested in (search for select_account on the link above).
This is possible. However, this has changed since Google announced the deprecation of their Google+ People API, which a lot of folks used to get all the email addresses for a user. The current most voted answer now goes to a 404.
Google Plus People API Replacement
Google has replaced the Google Plus People API /plus/v1/people/me with https://developers.google.com/people/ and you’ll want to use the https://www.googleapis.com/auth/user.emails.read profile scope as discussed here as a replacement. The schema is different, so you'll need to change your mapping as well.
If your app already used the following scopes from the old /plus/v1/people/me your user will not have to re-consent when you switch to the new API:
email
profile
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.login
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.me
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.profile.agerange.read
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.profile.emails.read
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/plus.profile.language.read
I have a project where I am using Selenium to test the Facebook auth. I created a Facebook app, created a test user inside this app and created some tests using Facebook login. Until now, it was working. But during the last two weeks something changed in Facebook and my tests are failing. It is due to interface changes in permissions dialog (I am targeting the button by his id). The second problem is that I don't get the email address from Facebook test user but a proxy email which is longer than 75 characters (my db field length is hardcoded in framework I am using).
If I log in as a regular user, it is working correctly and I get this permission box:
But when I log in as the test user I created (via 'switch to' in app's developer roles), I get this box:
I tested it ~2 weeks ago and this was yet working. Today it is changed. So my questions:
How to get back the old permissions box for test users?
How can I get the real email address and not the proxy?
Thanks!
I experienced the same problem with the Auth Dialog. I tried it with some old and new apps with various settings including March/Apr. 2013 Breaking Changes enabled/disabled, but it didn't help.
However, I guess I can help you with the email problem. When you login as a test user and go to account settings page, you will see the test user's primary email addres. By default this should be a really long one like the image I attached.
Facebook Platform returns this primary email address. If you pass the Auth Dialog with your test user account and see the privacy setting page, you will find the default primary email address is shared with the app. You have to provide a new email address for the test user and set the new one as primary email address via account setting page.
Why is the Login Dialog different with a test user?
With your test user, you can see the future of login dialogs. In fact, this isn't "not working" but this is an update which was unveiled on December 2012. Let me quote:
Our Login dialogs have undergone a redesign to make it easier to
understand permissions that apps request. We've simplified
presentation and have also updated our language for greater clarity.
“Basic info” has been renamed to “public profile and friend list,” to
reflect what what is being shared. Apps accessing your public profile
get your name, profile picture, age range, gender, language, country
and other public information.
Source: Providing People Greater Clarity and Control, developers.facebook.com/blog
The reason why you don't meet this update with a regular user, is that Facebook doesn't use to update everyone at the same time. They partially launch updates depending on the country, the type of account or some other parameters I ignore.
Example of a partial update (unified_message FQL table) dedicated to developer accounts:
We are providing early access to this API for registered developer
accounts only until the new messaging system is broadly available. You
should use the message table for production applications at the
current time.
In our case, we now know that test users can access to the update, but it is also said:
We have already launched many of these improvements as part of our
iOS6 integration and are now rolling them out more broadly.
About proxy emails
In fact, proxy emails are a way for any users to keep their real email anonymous. You have to consider proxy emails.
When joining an app, the user can choose between a real email and a proxy email:
Other thing you need to expect are users who didn't validate their account when connecting to your app, a case which is possible as described here and here.
Then, why do test users give back a proxy email? Because test users (being bots and having fake emails) didn't validate their emails.
You see that in at least 3 cases (and finally, test users are a good example), you need to handle these proxy emails. They are incidentally or accidentally met by developers and they can't be neglected. For your case, you can still try to disallow tests users who have a proxy email from accessing your app. But you should accept them and shouldn't force them to share their original e-mail addresses. A better solution is that you validate the test users emails:
Connect to the test user account that gives a proxy email
Add an email address (password needed here),
Go to the email mailbox and click on the validation link,
Set the new email address as primary,
The test user should now give his original email and not a proxy anymore!
I am working on a project related to both school and work where I would like to combine data from a college entrance application (which includes email address) and Facebook data, even a minimum amount of data, such as number of "friends" or any other public info they've put out there. Am I correct that you can't really programmatically search Facebook by email address? Feel free to make any suggestions.
Thanks
You can search Facebook by email address, you just can't reliably search Facebook by email address.
For instance, you can make this query with a user access token:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=user&q=USER#EMAIL.NET&access_token=TOKEN
I've tried this with a few people I know who are on Facebook, where I know their email address, but I am not friends with them. (Mostly my wife's friends).
In my testing, only about 20% of these queries return a Facebook user_id. I'm not sure if they don't have the email I know linked to their user account or if they have their privacy set to restrict their email address.
Once you have their user_id, you can access all their public information at
https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID
You don't need an access token to get this information.
I'm using Facebook Connect along with the Facebook Graph API to fetch user's email addresses when they sign up to my site. This works perfectly over 99% of the time but sometimes when I query the Graph API for a user's data after they have given my site permission, including the email permission, Facebook returns a large number (eg. 14036774009) as the person's email address.
So far, the numbers are always different and are always 11 digits long and all the other user data from the Graph API is valid. I've never been able to replicate this problem with a Facebook account that I control.
In some ways, the large number reminds me of the random proxy email addresses that Facebook generates for people who opt to give 3rd party apps a forwarding address instead of their main address (the proxy addresses look something like this: apps+148742679521093.617890126.8a2b26037e1ccd06bb81aaec5925f4c7#proxymail.facebook.com)
Can anyone explain this behavior or a way to fix it (and always get valid email addresses)?
It's a bug. Has already been reported to Facebook:
https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/298946933534016
It seems to be happening even when using the graph explorer - https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer, but only for some users. In my case about 0.2% of the time.
So until it is fixed you have 2 options:
If Facebook gives you a bad email value, ask the user for his/her email manually.
Save the long lived access token and try again periodically to see if you get the correct email back.
Are you still using the old auth dialog somehow?
The ability to provide a proxy email address is only in the old auth dialog
This happens for people who sign up to Facebook with their mobile phone number and the number returned is just that.
There is no option to get at the users' email address because he may not have given it to Facebook yet.
So there are definitely many tutorials out there regarding how to integrate various individual social network authentication/registration into existing user accounts. But the scenario I can't seem to find out much information about is if a user signs into your account with different social network credentials. For example:
Scenario #1
User registers on site using site's authentication.
User then signs in/registers on site using Facebook Connect.
User then signs in/registers on site using Twitter.
How do I integrate all of these into one account?
Obviously once a user is registered, they can add other social network associations in the account settings pages. But I am more concerned if they register via the other social network not remembering they are already setup.
My general thoughts are trying to figure out a way to use the "username" or email to try and guess and present the user a way to combine accounts right there.
Anyone have any thoughts?
following up -
if your users can't remember that they've signed up previously, well, best of luck to them in general ;)
much as you described, i'm planning on giving users the option to link additional accounts once they have signed in by one means or another.
but as far as cross-checking, there's only so much you can do. many social network APIs do indeed provide email addresses (once you've busted in through OAuth) but these may be accessible only if a user has elected to make his/her address public, which is not guaranteed.
also not guaranteed is that the user used the SAME email address for each social network account, so even if you manage to retrieve an address it may or not be of any use to you.
finally, if you find matching email addresses via such means, it might be advisable to prompt the user to link accounts rather than assume he/she wants this done automatically. some people like to maintain multiple personalities. i.e. "it looks like you are also signed up with twitter - do you want to link your accounts? it will make your life seem worth living."
you might consider offering incentives to link user accounts or to provide an email address (up to you of course to figure out what these might be, based on the functionality of your website).
solution i am working on, database-side, is to maintain multiple accounts and then if link information is discovered by various means, said link is indicated in a lookup table.
an alternative is once you find a link, attempt to combine all relevant entries for the multiple accounts into one account entity - all i can say about this latter approach is that i would do so with caution as there could be a formidable level of complexity depending on the user's activity level and the complexity of your database schema.
in my (mental/actual) namespace a user who registers the old-fashioned way has a 'standard' account and one who uses a social network has an 'alias' account. then the goal becomes to define where the alias is supposed to point, i.e. create the lookup such that a subsequent login via either means retrieves the relevant information for both accounts (with a preference for displaying personal data for the 'standard' account).
btw i figured out how to make twitter OAuth behave since my last post - you can look at my other answers for details if you're interested.
JB
hi matt,
i'm working on the same problem right
now.
assuming the user starts with regular
site account (which is not
necessarily safe to assume if he sees
all the pretty "connect with XXX
network" buttons!!!), you can use
either OAuth or the javascript APIs
(facebookConnect or #anywhere -
haven't fully figured out the latter
yet and i'm not sure I recommend it as
I don't think it provides as rich an
API as do the backend libraries) to
login to the other sites.
the APIs should return certain
information after a successful
login/redirect from the social network
- such as the user ID and an ACCESS TOKEN which you can then store in your
database in some capacity associating
your 'actual' application user with
the ID of the social network.
when the user returns to the site, you
can then
1 verify cookies set by the social
network services (various schemes
typically verifying a signature, based
on sha1 or md5 hash of your
application data - by which i mean the
data you get when you register your
app with twitter/facebook, typically a
consumer key, application ID, etc. -
with the received cookies) so you know
the user has logged in with the social
network
2 find your database entry association
as described above
3 login your user manually based on
the assumption that facebook/twitter
connection is secure.
caveat: this is only as secure as your
implementation (or as secure as
facebook/twitter's implementations, if
you prefer...)
although twitter's OAuth does not
currently seem to work quite right,
their general description of the
process is pretty informative:
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth
good luck.
J
I have been contemplating adding FB auth to our app, but we know that our returning users might click it and complete checkout for a new item, and then be surprised to not see any of their existing orders. To solve this, when a user clicks the 'Login with Facebook' item, we are using that click to fire a dropdown menu with two options:
[ Login with Facebook ]
[ Create new account ]
[ I have an account ]
If the user clicks 'I have an account' we send them to FB auth and return email from FB to our app. We compare that email to our existing users. If we match, we add the FB creds to the user. If no match, we throw an alert:
The email you have with FB does not match any of our accounts. To log in to your existing account, login with your email below, or update the email in your Facebook account
This allows the user to create a whole new account, if they want to keep them separate, without needing a new email service. While this is an edge case, it is a feature.