I have a website that's working with Facebook Connect (or Facebook for Websites as I think it's called now). When a user first comes to the site he's able ot browse around and do some simple things without any integration with Facebook. If he wants to perform some advanced operations, we need him logged into Facebook and to authorize our app to grab some very basic information about him. We're trying to be good corporate citizens by letting him get a taste of the site without forcing him to be logged in and authorize.
To do this, we have a Login button that he needs to push before performing advanced functions. When it's pushed we call https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth, etc. to get things set up.
This system works fine except for one thing. IF he is already logged into Facebook AND IF he has already authorized our app, he should just be frictionlessly logged in when he goes to the webapp. But, I can't see how to do this.
Sure, I can call https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth when he starts the webapp, and if the conditions are right, things work great. But if the conditions aren't right, then he's presented with a bunch of things to do that I don't want to task him with just yet.
Surely there's a way around this. How can I frictionlessly allow my users to authenticate through Facebook with the stipulation that if any of the conditions are wrong, just abort the whole process without showing the user anything?
Before you display a login button for the user, call FB.getLoginStatus() to see if they're already logged in or not.
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I'm sure this is something blindingly obvious, but I can't work it out.
I've added an admin and a tester user to my app (and I mean they're real people as opposed to the generated random named user that FB offers) but after a couple of weeks they're still listed as '(pending)' and they're unable to login to the web page that I've written using their Facebook account. OAuth responds with an error:
Sorry, this feature isn't available right now: An error occurred while processing this request. Please try again later.
I appear to be able to login just fine and can test the [currently] limited functions.
Our web page is right at the beginning of development but it's now at the stage where I'd like real people to mess around on the page and give me feedback.
The two users haven't received any messages - I sort of expected they'd get something in their inbox asking to confirm their role with the app.
So how do I go about getting real people to be test users? Have I missed the point of the test user role?
As of this writing (things change), have the Facebook user go to https://developers.facebook.com/requests/
They will need to be logged in to Facebook.
There should be listed one or more pending requests that they will need to confirm. If the Confirm button(s) is disabled, they may need to register as a Facebook Developer before the Confirm buttons are enabled.
I've been trying to get this to work for a while, but I've apparently missed something.
All I want is to have the latest 3 or so posts from my clients Facebook page to populate and animate in a screensaver that I am building using Flash (AS3).
So far, every time I try to bring anything in, it requires a complete oAuth login and account link, but it's only a one way exchange (read-only, absolutely no writing, posting or even linking, since it's a screensaver) I'm not even sure the client wants pictures or anything.
I am currently trying to use the facebook-actionscript-api, but there isn't an option for the "App Login" type of Authentication that would solve most of my problems.
I'm at wits end and about to have to tell my client it can't be done. At least they'll always have twitter...
I don't think it is possible to get facebook feeds without an accesstoken (even if they are public). So I guess you need to define an app within Facebook and add login stuff to your app so users can give permission to your app for basic access.
Maybe this article offers some help: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook/articles/flex_fbgraph_pt1.html
I have seen many web apps supporting Facebook Connect...
But when i login through those apps sometimes the authentication is successful but nothing is returned to the app and the login page just goes to a blank page in that new windows and stops... The whole process fails... And this has not occurred once but many times...
So my question is:
Is Facebook Connect a good solution to use in apps or should i use something like Google Login or Twitter Login or OpenID or just a simple password based login or all of the things and let users choose what they want?
And if your answer is app the solutions then wont my database become messy and the app slower because it has look for more data now?
I know it depends on various factors but I just want your opinion, what would u choose and why?
Supporting Facebook connect as login function make sense only if your app has something to deal with Facebook (which is the most of our app today ;-)).
The behave of some app when sucessfully Authenticated and then Authorized is up to these app.
FB login give you all the tools to build you own user experience.
The things become a bit more difficult when you want to introduce FBConnect within already existing login base, while you have to find a way to bind the Identified FB user with your user account.
Whenever I first click on a Facebook app it puts up a screen asking for permissions. Does the API enforce this, or is it possible to display a screen using either fake or the user's publicly accessible data?
You do not have to ask for any permissions right away. Your app can have the equivalent of a "guest" mode, similar to how many websites work until the user has logged in. I'm not sure why more apps don't operate like that, as a user I'm always a bit put off when something asks for permission before I've even seen the first page of it.
when you visit a Facebook Canvas app (such as http://apps.facebook.com/branchout/) and you are not logged in to Facebook, you will get the "Please log in to continue." dialog every 10 seconds or so.
I am planning to develop a Facebook Canvas app that does not ask for user authentication/ app authorization upfront (I don't want to scare users away), but I do not want to go that way if I cannot stop that dialog.
Is there any way to disable it, or should I rather ask for authentication/ authorization upfront? Thank you for sharing your experience.
Brent is right, it's just a bug. The what's-going-on pane on the right hand side tries to reload, and gets confused when there's no user logged in. Don't worry about it, it should be gone soon :-)
I'm pretty sure that is Facebook trying to refresh their ads. I've done a few apps that don't require authentication or login until specific actions are performed. If you are not logged into Facebook, then that prompt comes up. The only action I am performing is calling getLoginStatus on load. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there is any way around it. When I load my app directly (not in a Facebook iframe), the prompt doesn't come up.