we have created a Facebook app, but when opening this on a mobile (via Web or iPhone) the page results in a 4oh4 error. I have setup a Mobile Web URL but still (after 1 hour wait) gives a 404.
Do I need to make specific changes on my app?
Please help.
This is expected as #Igy stated. You will need to have a handler to support redirecting mobile users to your apps.facebook.com/ or you can redirect them out of Facebook to your own URL if you are going to try and link to your page directly with an app embedded as a tab.
i.e. point link to http://yoursite.com/redirector
is mobile goes to http://yoursite.com/myapp or http://apps.facebook.com/
non mobile goes to http://facebook.com//app_
Some things to note:
You won't get any page specific data back from facebook on your page (i.e. Liked or Not Liked).
Based on #1 you won't be able to restrict the non-liking app users from a page.
After trying everything under the sun to get Facebook to redirect to a mobile web URL, here is what I needed to do in order to get the redirection working:
Make sure the Facebook application is a canvas application. This gives you the ability to give the application a namespace.
Give your application a namespace so that you can access it through https://apps.facebook.com/NAMESPACE. From here, Facebook will do the detection for you, and if needed, redirect your users to your specified mobile URL.
Make sure your app is NOT in sandbox mode.
If your app is in Sandbox Mode, Facebook won't redirect you to the mobile version you have specified in your app settings.
Facebook does the redirecting for you, you don't have to. Although their version of what "mobile" is and what you deem "mobile" might be different.
Related
I have a Facebook app the currently consists of 3 elements - an App on Facebook, Mobile Web, and a Page Tab.
Currently if I use the app URL it detects whether I am on a mobile or not and directs me to either the app on Facebook or the mobile web site.
What I'd like it to do is always show the app in the context of the page tab. Is there anyway to force this?
I tried looking at whether I could use the page tab URL directly and have that redirect to the mobile but depending on how I've linked it either returns a 404 or just takes you to the Facebook page. I appreciate I could do my own mobile detection but I thought I'd check if I'm missing something in Facebook first.
I wrote an explanation of how to do this here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14434072/create-facebook-page-tab-and-publish-template-on-it/14455665#14455665
Hope this is what you are after!
What is App Domain used for in Facebook Apps?
Somebody had asked the same in What are App Domains in Facebook Apps? but I didn't really get it.
What I am trying to do is "publish actions" from a mobile app. The object to be published must be stored in a separate web page. And the domain of the separate page is supposed to be included in app domains.
Is app domain applicable for Mobile apps as well?
Well AppDomain simply means where is located your application's server side files.
Your application only usable from that domain. Facebook needs data for cross domain and security issues.
Unless you're going to use FB auth for a website you don't need to fill App Domain input.
I encountered the same issue for my mobile app. To fix it, I set the App Domain to my domain. But that wasn't enough because I then got the error:
Error
You have specified an App Domains but have not specified a Site URL or a Mobile Web URL
puurbuy.com must be derived from your Site URL or your Mobile Web URL.
So I had to go one step further and enable "Website with Facebook Login" setting the URL to my homepage, even though I do not have a Facebook login on my website. A terrible work around in my opinion, but it worked.
Because not using Sandbox Mode:
1. Had to establish a category on appdetails page
2. Had to set Website with Facebook Login
3. Then able to set App Domain
Now the debug pulls in the correct information without error.
App domain is not something related to your app or web domain, this is basically a App Store address.
Simply write this line in App Domains.
apps.apple.com
this worked for me.
We have a post on a FB wall. It points to http://tinyurl.com/{something}.
When the link is clicked in a non-mobile web browser, it works fine: TinyURL redirects the user to our web site using the appropriate URI including a special querystring.
When the link is clicked in a mobile web browser on my Android, it fails with the error in the title of this question.
When the link is clicked in the FB native app for iPad and in Safari on the iPad, it works fine.
I have tried adding our URL to the Mobile Web setting in the Basic Settings tab of the FB App configuration. That results in all links pointing directly to the root of our web site with a funky set of parameters in a querystring -- in other words, it doesn't follow the TinyURL in that particular case. The funky parameters include "refid", "ref", and "ft".
So primarily my question is: Why, when I specify the URL in the Mobile Web setting as described in the previous paragraph, does it redirect to our main URL instead of the TinyURL link originally called for?
I think this is something Facebook broke very recently (perhaps even today?). When a user clicks on any links to our app from inside the Facebook native iOS app, they get this error "Either this application has not configured its Mobile Web URL or the URL could not be verified as owned by the application. Unable to redirect." We had never set a Mobile Web URL previously, and everything had been fine since we launched the app over a year ago. We sent all mobile clicks to the same URL's as desktop browsers and handled the mobile rendering server-side. We have not changed our application domain inside the App Settings or anything like that.
In the App Settings, can set a Mobile Web URL to our homepage and the link works (and the error message goes away) but that's not the desired behavior at all - it would mean that all links end up at the same Mobile Web URL regardless of what the link was!
Was this change made on purpose by Facebook and if so why? There's been no mention of this whatsoever on the Developer Blog.
Update 3/21 8:10am PST:
I've since found this to be a widespread problem, not just for a few apps. Just by clicking around I've seen this error on posts to weather.com, youtube, msn.com and a dozen others. It happens on both clicks from the Timeline as well as the News Feed (although strangely sometimes the same post works on one, but not the other!), and from the m.facebook.com mobile web app as well as the native iOS app.
I commented on http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/302635863137683 but no word from Facebook yet. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this right now, this is a major bug.
In your app, go to Settings -> Add platform -> Website
Add both, Website URL and Moblie Website (Yes, you need these both), then your app will be able to be opened from facebook native app.
You will also need the FB Canvas.
Same here, I recently noted that all links of items shared with our Adroid or iPhone app are broken. This only happens with the mobile version of Facebook the Desktop web version is still working. What is actually wrong on the mobile version is that the original shared url is replaced with a m.facebook url that ends with "?ref=unknown&refid=0&ft=fbid.332036910178718%3Ainterface.m_touch%3Ac.m" When user click on it Facebook is redirecting the user to the App's "Mobile Web URL" + "?ref=unknown&refid=0&ft=fbid.332036910178718%3Ainterface.m_touch%3Ac.m" instead of the original shared url.
My opinion is that this is an issue of Facebook that is redirecting the url to the wrong location, "Mobile Web URL" instead of the original post url.
Ok not working. What is going on, 1st directed to something about itunes url. I am on an Android not an Iphone. Sad state when an disabled person is unable to gain access the same as others. This is bad for all users.
I'm a bit confused about the difference between a facebook canvas application and a facebook mobile web application. Here is the context of my confusion..
I have a canvas application, let us call its namespace as myfbapp, and I basically can access it from https://apps.facebook.com/myfbapp and after I login to FB it opens up with in Facebook. I'm using java (apache / tomcat) for my server side implementation and for simplicity sake let us say I just have an index.html and a authenticationfilter.java (which implements Filter) in my web application. I don't have any Facebook specific Javascript API (no FB.init() javascript or anything like that ) or code in my index.html. Whenever user accesses my canvas application I first get a request to my web application where I get the signed_request , oauth_token , FB user ID etc which I can use for my internal authentication, session creation etc. I have absolutely no issues with this canvas application and every thing works fine. Please note that when user accesses this app the request I get from the browser to my app server has the signed_request , user_id etc.
Now I wanted to make this app available on mobile devices as well and I thought, oh well all I need to do is add the mobile URL for this app in the mobile web app section in Facebook for the same myfbapp. I did that and as expected when I login to facebook from my android phone myfbapp is listed under the apps section, so far so good. The problem starts when I click on the app. I get the request on my app server but it doesn't contain the signed_request , user_id etc.. ????? I was expecting the mobile app to work the same way as the canvas app but apparently it doesn't or I'm doing some thing wrong.
Then I started reading more about facebook mobile app at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/web/#register where it talks about adding various Facebook Javascript API's in the index.html (I never did anything like that in my canvas app) and then I started thinking , may be then mobile web app is more (or exactly) like a regular web app with FB connect and not like canvas application (meaning it doesn't really load with in Facebook) , is this true?
On mobile facebook you can not see any custom pages/tabs. They are apparently wokring on that at the moment.
So it will be different to a canvas app. Your mobile app will be a completely seperate site and page not in an iFrame on Facebook.
Some behaviour i discovered recently with Facebook Canvas / Page Tabs on mobile devices.
Maybe this helps to understand a little bit better how facebook behaves in mobile context.
Mobile Browser
Access App URL
Example URL http://apps.facebook.com/myapp/
Redirects to the configured mobile website under Settings > Website > Mobile Site URL and adds additional params /?ref=web_canvas&code=<signed_request_code_field>
About the signed_request code field
An OAuth Code which can be exchanged for a valid user access token via a subsequent server-side request
Access App Center
There is no way to access the Facebook App Center via the mobile browser.
Access Page Tab
Example URL http://facebook.com/a_facebook_page/custom_page_tab_url
Custom Page Tabs are not visible via the mobile browser.
Facebook Open Graph Search
Searching for myapp returns the link to the Facebook Canvas.
Same behaviour like Access App URL via Mobile Browser
Mobile Facebook Client
Access App URL
There is no way to access this url directly.
Access App Center
There is no way to access the Facebook App Center.
Access Page Tab
Example URL http://facebook.com/a_facebook_page/custom_page_tab_url
Custom Page Tabs are not visible via the mobile facebook client.
Facebook Open Graph Search
It says that this app is not compatible with this devices.
You need to register an iOS / Android App and send the user to this app to get rid of this error. Probably it helps the user if you add the link to the standalone application to the Facebook description of the app. Which should then be visible there.
I currently have a custom app on Facebook that works fine on desktop PC's (full version of Facebook). As you would know you can't access custom apps from mobile devices and it redirects you to the wall of the page.
Is there a way to redirect them to a mobile web app if they try to access the app from a mobile device? So that way when people share links to the app I can at least show them something.
I saw the Mobile Web URL option in my app but am unsure on how this will actually work.
You are referring to the "mobile tab access" Vitrue announced this week? :)
What they are doing is this (basically):
Create a special link to the tab (mydomain.com/tablink1 or something, NOT the ?sk=app_xxxx URL in the browser bar)
On that link they have code which does a conditional redirect
If it's a regular browser/device, redirect to the tab (?sk=app_xxxx)
If it's a mobile browser/device, redirect to an alternate mobile webpage with the same content as the tab (mydomain.com/mobilecontent1)
The redirect is not on the actual tab, since the mobile browsers will never get there. It has to be on a separate page.
So if they try to access the tab on a mobile device with the regular tab URL they will not get redirected. It only works if they go to the special redirect URL. Vitrue's application publishes that special redirect URL to the Page wall.
It works very well to make sure everything you post to your Wall (which mobile users can see) does not break, but it does not really provide a redirect for mobile users trying to get to your tab.
That's the best we can do right now though, until Facebook actually comes up with a mobile tab solution (bug filed here: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/264010470314544)
Good luck!