I would like to develop an IOs app with facebook integrated.
However, after some research I found out that facebook connect seem to be outdated?
Even the facebook official page only talk about Single Sign On where user will be redirect away the app to login.
So my question is, do you think it's still safe to use Facebook Connect?
Since i still see a lot app using it.
Yes Facebook connect for iOS has been replaced with Facebook SDK for iOS and it is an open source library on Github that users their Graph API. I would not start a new project with the deprecated Facebook connect library because it will eventually be killed and they won't give you a lot of notice since the replacement has already been out for over a year.
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I created an facebook app and now there is no "host your app in Heroku" I wanted check the default python application for the facebook app.
So Im not sure if now I'm not able to create more apps in heroku or heroku is no longer with facebook or maybe it is a bug.
Does someone know what is happening here ?
Thank you
The formal Facebook integration is no longer available.
However, independent of whether or not the button to create a Heroku app is on Facebook or not, you can always create an app on Heroku that integrates with Facebook. You'll just have to manually perform the administrative and configuration steps that were previously automated.
You mentioned wanting the default Python app? You can find the various Heroku/Facebook app templates in GitHub:
Python Facebook app
Ruby Facebook app
PHP Facebook app
Node.js Facebook app
I used to develop a few FB apps in the past (using the old rest-ased api), and now I'm considering to make them actually usable again by porting them to the new 3.1 API.
Sounds nice, but for some reason this is way harder than I should be...
So here are few questions:
Is there any example of a canvas app using the 3.1 API? Google did not give me anything useful
Is there still a difference between iframe and FMBL canvas applications? In my app settings, I checked the fmbl-option, but when I'm back at the app overview page, it still says it's an iframe app.
The SDK mentions the getUser() function to get the user-id, but how do I request the necessary permissions for my app? When I do some googling, I find even another solution which calls a specific url and then performs a callback. This solution however doesn't seem to php sdk at all!
Where is the documentation of the php-api? The only usable thing I find is this: https://github.com/facebook/php-sdk which consists only a few lines of code. And I suspect this is for having a fb login-button on your own website, not for a canvas app.
Firstly, good luck, and best wishes - you'll need it. Maintaining Facebook apps is way harder than it should be, because Facebook doesn't believe in legacy support, changes things all the time, and deprecates things quickly and completely. As a (former) Facebook app dev myself, I can tell you there is only one constant: apps will die if you leave them alone. As an app developer, Facebook owes you no favors, and it is vicious when it comes to breaking apps.
As for specifics: as of June 2012, Facebook has deprecated and removed FBML and the REST API, and there is no longer any difference between canvas apps and iFrame apps. This isn't a soft, "you shouldn't use it" deprecation - it's a hard, "your apps are now broken" deprecation. All apps are now iFrame apps, as there is no longer any other way to build them. The docs on how to build a canvas/iFrame app are here, and there's an auth migration guide that may be helpful in conversion. Oh, and you'll need to get your app running on HTTPS too, if you haven't already.
As for the rest of it, it sucks, but the only way you're really going to be able to maintain and get your application working is using the Open Graph API. Using the PHP SDK, you just run $facebook->api('/graph/url/here') - for instance, to get user information, run $facebook->api("/$userid"). You get the URLs off of the Open Graph docs - just grab everything after the graph.facebook.com bit and pass it to api(). It's another learning curve, and (depending on the complexity/modularity of your code) is anywhere from a lot to a nightmarish mountain of changes, and there are no drop-in replacements. Sometimes you can use the old REST api, but I doubt that will last very much longer either. It's painful, but that's how it goes. You're at the mercy of Facebook, because it's their data.
Upgrading apps involves a shift in thinking: apps are now literally just webpages surrounded by the Facebook chrome. There is now no difference between an external website that uses Facebook's api to pull in information and an app that runs inside of Facebook. It's for that reason, personally, that I've shifted to just that for my own app - an external website that just happens to use Facebook for most of its posting/sharing/user info needs.
For authorization, you request permissions via OAuth, using any number of methods. There are docs on how to do that over on Facebook as well. Specifically for the PHP api, you generate a URL using getLoginURL() and then redirect to it. Facebook eventually redirects back to a URL you specify with info about whether they authorized your app and such, after which you can do a getUser(). If you want fancy/slick/user-friendly popup dialogs without a bunch of redirecting, the Javascript SDK is your friend.
It's my first posting on here (although I've been using this site for reference for quite some time).
I've been trying for several days now to find or dream up a way to use Facebook's "Single Sign On" from within a mobile web app (not a native iOS or Android app) to automatically sign a user into a web app if they are already logged into Facebook from the native Facebook app on their mobile device for example.
My limited knowledge is telling me that it can't be done since the mobile browser and the 'system' (iOS for example) are too separated (I can't, I don't think, have my mobile web app use or access the native Facebook app on a mobile device in any way).
I have found and read the iOS, Android AND Mobile documentation provided by Facebook (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/) which all seems to make enough sense, but after days of trawling through everything else I could find on the subject there doesn't seem to be a way to use, for example, the Facebook app on an iPhone or Android device to automatically log a user in to my web app if he/she is already logged into Facebook.
I've read lots about doing this from within 3rd party native apps and also other people trying to achieve a similar thing from within Desktop apps but I'm trying and hoping to be able to achieve this from a web app running within a mobile web browser.
I'd be very grateful for any help, opinions or pointers in the right direction since I think this would be an excellent step forward in UI for mobile web apps to have (not just the native apps).
Many thanks in advance...
Probably a bit late to the party but in case anyone else is wondering yes it's possible with Cordova/Phonegap and the Facebook Connect Plugin: https://github.com/davejohnson/phonegap-plugin-facebook-connect/
Using the FB.getLoginStatus() method at startup allows to check if the user is already signed in with the native Facebook App and retrieve its profile. More details in the examples provided in the repo.
I have not yet implemented it myself, but seems possible according to:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/web/build/#login
How to connect to Facebook using the downloaded Facebook app, and not the embeeded Facebook connect. This is done for example with Rockmelt app.
What seems to be done, is to launche a third party app using the url like (fb:some paramaeters) and having a callback url with your app (myapp://authentification parameter ).
The interest of this is that if you are already logged on facebook, you just need to approve or not your app.
What is missing, is what are the parameters to acheive this with the downloaded facebook app.
Just use the supplied Facebook Connect library as it handles all this for you. FBConnect by default will use single sign on either via the browser or the facebook app if already installed.
You can examine the source code of the FBConnect library to see how this is done if you wish, but I'd suggest that re-inventing the wheel is perhaps not the best way to go.
I'm working on integrating Facebook with my iPhone/iOS application and I want to know if I'm understanding the nature of the login procedure correctly.
With the old Facebook SDK ('Facebook iPhone SDK'), when we needed to request authentication permission from a user a UIWebView would be displayed with a login prompt. With the new SDK ('Facebook SDK for iOS'), the SDK uses Apple's fast-app-switching feature to temporarily place the app in background mode and then load the iOS Facebook app or Safari to authenticate. Is this basically the gist of it?
I've experimented with authenticating my app via the new SDK's technique and due to the nature of my app, it just can't support backgrounding. Does this mean I have to use the old SDK to launch a UIWebView-based authentication? I think this implementation is a lot cleaner anyway. Will I run into any major disadvantages from doing this?
Check out this question and my answer: Iphone facebook connect example calls safari. I don't want to use safari
You can make it use the UIWebView always. Facebook is trying to make it so the user only has to log in once per device (through either the Facebook app or in Safari) but I didn't like this flow (especially on the iPad). Though I'd rather not muck around with the Facebook code, I did find commenting out a few lines to be a quick way of getting the old behavior back.
I don't believe this is the case.
The Facebook SDK that I'm aware of, available at https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk doesn't do anything like you describe. Is this the SDK you're using? I believe the last major update to this SDK from the "old" facebook SDK was to add support for OAuth-style authentication. With this change they broke code compatibility so apps were forced to make changes to incorporate the latest SDK.
When you call 'authorize' in this SDK you pass the app id, the desired permissions, and a callback delegate for notifications of errors or success (did login, did not login, did logout). You can also set any access token that you might have persisted from a previous session. Facebook validates this access token, and if it doesn't exist or is invalid it presents a modal login dialog. I believe the content of this dialog is a web page. The SDK authenticates the user using OAuth and makes the auth-token available for persisting between sessions.
At no time is the app exited to run the Facebook app or Safari. I'm curious - what led you to believe this was the case? (Or, perhaps there is some other SDK out there I'm unaware of?)
Take a look on this page: https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk
And look at Single Sign-On. That describes the above scenario with fast switching.