Clear all Facebook profile fields and manually fill out the registration form? - facebook

Question

You know how users can clear the pre-populated form and revert to normal registration?
I'm developing an iframe registration app and when the user clears the form fields, it looks like the signed_request is still valid (if upon load the user was logged into facebook).
Anyone know how we are supposed to know if the user is really using FB info or registration info? I previously thought the session would tell us but my session is still valid after the
user hits "clear form".
// Check to make sure we have a signed_request object, if not, redirect to home
var sreq = Request.Form["signed_request"];
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(sreq))
{
Response.Redirect(WebConstants.SiteConstants.Home);
}
var app = new FacebookApp();
WHy is app.UserId still populated if the user clears the FORM!
How do I detect that we really want to integrate with FB or not ?
thanks!

Answer 1

I agree about the authentication vs registration but I think the Facebook API is not clearing the authentication cookie correctly because it is still valid if you clear the form or logout (i'm using iFrame registration), so I guess I'm looking for a best practice since when I get the signed-request, the id is the authenticated user so the only work-around I have right now is to check for String.IsEmptyOrNull( on the password field) - which tells me that this user did not use facebook registration). I think this is a hack but if anyone knows the "proper" way to take a signed request and convert it to an object please comment on my approach. It is kinda amazing that we still have to write a ton of code for what should be a straight forward approach to getting what we need. I've seen tons of complaints about FB development and they are mostly true - the Google API is not this frustrating and FB makes it almost impossible to test different environments as well (not to mention the famous cookie problems with localhost).
Problem : App.UserId is still the authenticated user after clearing the iframe form or logging out of FB - go figure.
Solution : check the presense of password field - this tells us that we have a non-fb registration going on....
C#.NET for all the minority out there.
// Check to make sure we have a signed_request object, if not, redirect to home var sreq = Request.Form["signed_request"]; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(sreq)) { Response.Redirect(WebConstants.SiteConstants.Home); }
JObject meObject = null;
var app = new FacebookApp();
if (app.SignedRequest != null)
{
meObject = JObject.Parse(app.SignedRequest.Dictionary["registration"].ToString());
// Access meObject
JavaScriptSerializer ser = new JavaScriptSerializer();
fbReg = ser.Deserialize<FBRegistration>(meObject.ToString());
if (fbReg != null)
{
// 02 Feb 2011 - MCS - bug in facebook API, does not delete cookie if logout of FB
// We check to see if we have password - then - we know we can check the UserId
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(fbReg.password))
{
// FB Registration
FacebookUserId = app.UserId;
}
else
{
FacebookUserId = 0;
// Non FB Registration

Answer 2

Registration and authentication are two completely different things. Just because the user "clears" a form does not log them out of facebook. The C# SDK is just detecting if a signed_request exists and is valid.