Developing Facebook

Application 

Wasu Khaodee
Kanda Runapongsa Saikaew
Computer Engineering 
Khon Kaen University
Facebook Application Types
1. Run on web-browser
        1.1 A Website
        1.2 Canvas Application 
    (Apps on Facebook.com)    
2.  Run on a platform
        - Mobile Application
In this slide, we focus on developing Canvas Application
Focused Facebook APIs

1.  Graph API
• The Graph API is the core of Facebook Platform, enabling
you to read and write data to Facebook
• “nested query” is not supported by Graph API and in many
cases, we need to get the data with multiple Graph API
requests    
2.  FQL (Facebook Query Language)
• FQL is designed to condense Facebook queries and reduce
response size
• Has similar syntax with SQL but there are somethings that
cannot be done in FQL such as
o No Group by

        
What is Graph API?

• At Facebook's core is the social graph; people and the connections

they have to everything they care about
• The Graph API presents a simple, consistent view of the Facebook
social graph, uniformly representing objects in the graph
(e.g., people, photos, events, and pages) and the connections
between them (e.g., friend relationships, shared content, and photo
tags) 
• Every object in the social graph has a unique ID
•  You can access the properties of an object by
requesting https://graph.facebook.com/ID
What is FQL?

• Facebook Query Language, or FQL, enables you to use a SQL-style

interface to query the data exposed by the Graph API. It provides for some
advanced features not available in the Graph API, including batching
multiple queries into a single call
• You can execute FQL queries by
fetching https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=QUERY. You
can specify a response format as either XML or JSON with
the format query parameter.
• Example
• SELECT name FROM user WHERE uid = me()
Facebook Software
Development Kit (SDK)
Here we are using PHP and Java Script

    - PHP SDK where source

        here : https://github.com/facebook/php-sdk/

    - Java Script where source 

        here : http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js
Application Permissions
Applications Permissions
 http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
permissions

Your App got only public data access without request

more permission.

Likes your app need to post some content

"publish_stream" need to be requested. 
Creating Your Canvas App (1/4)

First goto : http://www.facebook.com/developers/

here
Creating Your Canvas App (2/4)

Your Apps Name here

And read the Terms

then create the app
Creating Your Canvas App (3/4)

Apps URL 

host URL 
Creating Your Canvas App (4/4)

For Apps URL is where user access to your app.

Like http://apps.facebook.com/fbpublishpage

And host URL is where your Code is located. 

Here we choose Canvas type as IFrame according to

Developer Roadmap 
Create App Instance

get the SDK here : facebook.php

or download here : https://github.com/facebook/php-

sdk/archives/master
Get Session and Login

 //Get App Session

 //Get User Info to check the

login status

 //Get login URL (also

grants permissions)

 //Just login if the user did not login  

Using Graph API to See Feed

Result for the code above

 Using Graph API to Post Status

destination user id  identification of the author

to post  the message

and this is the result 

Using FQL to See Picture URL

FQL command is like SQL such as SELECT, FROM,

WHERE, IN or LIMIT

and this is the result 

Using Javascript with PHP to save ID of a
specified friend name

//Get current session 

//Do some FQL call 

Using JavaScript with PHP to post
message to a friend's wall

//Send message with Graph API

Current UI
Result from posting message to a
friend's wall
result from the program
Reference
• http://developers.facebook.com/docs/
• http://www.slideshare.net/csaila/fql-overview
• http://www.takwing.idv.hk/
• Sample Code