How to select specific users who can only grant acces? - facebook

Is it possible to select specific Facebook users (based on an ID?) that are able to view the content of your website, after logging in?
E.g. I only want specific persons that are able to view the content that is available on the website.
I'm looking forward to your responses!

You can define test users for sandbox mode, but i'm getting the impression that's not what you're talking about.
If it's a production setting:
You should have some sort of storage of user_ids that are allowed to see the content. In your code (Server or Client side, preferably server so that the content isn't in the page source) you should check to see if they have a valid Facebook session and if its a user_id you can recognize as valid.

Related

Is it possible to manipulate the database through mail in oracle apex?

I was having the similar problem as mentioned in the below link, Select and Display the table in oracle APEX mail body. I followed the mentioned steps and it worked!! .
Now, I just want to extend the same question and wanted to know, Is it possible to manipulate the the database through click on the button in the mail?
If I crate the html Button APPROVE, It should be able to manipulate database table.
Suppose, APPROVE performs delete operation: delete ename from emp where dno=10.
VERSION : ORACLE APEX 4.2
If you are sending an HTML email to a user and you want that user to interact with the system from the email, you could generate an HTML form that submits to a particular URL (some APEX page with some set of parameters) that actually implements the DELETE.
Assuming that the client email application would allow the user to submit a form, which would generally be a security issue and would probably not be possible from some clients, you'd probably have security issues to worry about on the server side. I'd assume, for example, that you don't want to allow any random person that works out the URL to call to be able to delete whatever row you want from your system. You probably want to require that someone is logged in before you'd allow them to delete a row. And you probably want to make sure that they have permission to delete that particular row.
It's certainly possible that you could work around both the client and the server side permission issues by doing something like creating a unique token that expires after a short period of time and gets passed in with the form to verify that the user has permission to delete that particular row. But by the time you're building that sort of infrastructure or sending users to a login page, you're probably better off just creating links in your email that point to a page in your application and letting users go there to request the actual delete. That's going to work more reliably than a form that submits a request and it will probably involve less work for you.

Do we need client-side flow or server-side flow or both to implement the login with facebook feature?

Currently on my website, users login with their login id and password, they are also required to enter their email when they register. Both login_id and email column on the users table have unique index. users table also stores other data associated with the user such as gender,last_name,first_name but these are optional (nullable) fields.
There are two changes I would like to make to the website.
The first one is, users can use their email (in addition to login_id) to login. For new users, when they register, they no longer need to provide a login_id because they will be using their email to login.
The second change is, they can login with facebook. For new users, if they login with facebook for the first time, their facebook uid will be obtained and stored in my database. This means I will have to add a facebook_uid column on the users table.
For existing users, when they login with facebook for the first time, I should first obtain their email address from their facebook profile and then check if there already exists a record using that email in the users table, if yes, their facebook uid will also be stored on the facebook_uid column on that record.
According to facebook, its platform supports two different OAuth 2.0 flows for user login: server-side flow and client-side flow. Which one or both is required for this use case?
Also, what problems can be anticipated when I implement the features like I describe above?
You could take either approach for this, it's entirely up to you. Both methods will give you the data you need, it's a question of how comfortable you are working on the back vs front end. You just need to ask for permission to access to the user's email address.
Problems that could happen: I'm not sure but there may be legal restrictions on storing the user's Facebook ID. Also, what if someone (not me, an evil person!) registers with my email address and you don't validate that they really have access to that address - then when I log in via Facebook, the app will assume we're the same person and the evil hacker now has access to my account. Unlikely scenario but could happen...

iOS identify user(s)

I am building app that will serve some content to the users via my private server. At the server-side I would like to identify user, so that I don't serve same content twice to the same user. How can I identify user(s)?
One way is DeviceID, but user can have multiple devices...?
Is the only way to have my own user IDs for my application (registration). I don't like this as it adds extra complexity to the app.
I know it's a hard task, but maybe facial recognition (from the webcam) could help in logging in users, since it doesn't imply any relation between user and device.
For example, face.com offers a free web-based API for facial recognition.
Although, Ishu's answer (username/password) is the easiest and most standard way to do identify users.
Make an id for user's and also a login page in the app. save his id with in you content table for send that content for that user. if that content entry already having his id then don't send to him otherwise send to him.
I don't think there is another option. You must use user id nothing else.

Social Network (Facebook, Twitter, etc) User Account Integration (duplicate scenario)

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.

Facebook Connect Implementation questions

I hope this is allowed but I have a number of questions regarding Facebook Connect, I'm quite unsure on how I should approach implementing it.
I am working on a live music type service and currently have user registration, etc. If I were to implement Facebook Connect alongside this, would I still be able to email the Facebook Connect users as if they were on my database?
Also, would it instead be possible to let users who have Facebook "link" their accounts once registered so I am able to give them the benefits of sharing via Facebook and inviting friends while still having an actual registered user on my system.
I have tried to read up answers to the above questions but what I've found is quite ambiguous.
Thanks, look forward to your views.
Facebook's documentation process is very poor, so don't feel bad about having a hard time getting started. Their wiki-style approach to documentation without any real official documents tends to leave the "process flow" tough to grasp, and requires piecing together parts of a bunch of randomly scattered docs.
Facebook has an obligation to protect privacy, so they never make a user's actual email address available to application developers, through Connect or normal applications. They do have a proxied email system in place that you can use, however, you must get explicit permission from a user in order to email them. There's a decent document on proxied email here. You can get permission by prompting for it; there's several methods for doing so linked in that document.
In regards to linking Facebook and local accounts, this would definitely be the way to go. Once a Connect user logs in, you want to store that fact for that user so you can provide the Facebook-specific functionality. I would simply create a normal user account in the database for every new Connect user that came by, with it's own local id, so that you don't have to do special handling of two different types of user accounts all over the site. That being said, the account would obviously have to be marked as a Facebook user's account (I use an externalId column in my users table), and any part of the site that relied on information you might otherwise have locally would have to handle the Facebook aspect properly (such as using proxied email instead of normal email).
For existing users, you could arrange an "account link" by having a process whereby they log into FB Connect after they've logged into the site already, and you could detect that and simply add their FB id to your users table. After that, they could log in through Connect in the future, or through your normal process. I've never done this, but it should be possible.
If you write the account handling code generically enough, your site will be able to function well no matter what kind of user you throw at it.