Facebook ApplicationsStuart Stubbs, Web Developer

Facebook Introduction

• What is a Facebook application and how does it work

• Steps to create a Facebook application

• Demo Live App

• How we are using the application

• Explore how we have implemented the application

What is a Facebook Application

• A way to interact with the 800 million active users as of July 2011

• A way to add interaction onto a Page created on Facebook

• Facebook recently changed the way applications work to be using iFrames

• Allows Developers to create the page externally

• Allows the creation of normal webpages away from Facebook with some generic information, e.g. User has liked the page and their minimum age

• From the application we can request additional information that we can then use, e.g. ability to post on walls and their email address

Steps to creating a Facebook Application

• A Facebook page where you wish to host the application

• A developer account, this can be created on any user account, just log into: https://developers.facebook.com/

• From here, create a new application with a name

• Input the information to point the application to your website

Steps to creating a Facebook Application

From the created application there are a few pieces of information that are very important: • The App ID and the Secret key

• These allow your hosted site be able to interact with your application

• You are able to change other information such as the name, and change the image for the application

• To add the application to the page you need the application iFrame location and the application ID: https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id={APPID}&{IFRAME URL}

Steps to creating the Application

• Currently there is a Facebook C# SDK that allows a developer to be able to integrate with the Facebook API

• There are a few settings that will need to be set in the Web Config

• I created my own wrapper class around their SDK to make integrating Facebook easier and more relevant for the applications we create

Front End Code

Back End Code

Any questions

Hopefully you have an understanding of a basic Facebook Application and how to start to implement your own.

…… If you have any questions, please post a comment on the blog or contact us via Twitter!