Facebook Application Development with Graph API Cookbook

366 Pages·2011·8.58 MB·English

by  Shashwat Srivastava

Facebook Application
Development with
Graph API Cookbook
Over 90 recipes to create your own exciting Facebook
applications at an incredibly fast pace with Facebook
Graph API
Shashwat Srivastava
Apeksha Singh
[PACK ]
PUBLISHING
BIRMINGKAM - MUMBAI
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
Facebook Application Development with
Graph API Cookbook
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: November 2011
Production Reference: 1091111
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84969-092-8
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Cover Image by Siddharth Ravishankar ([email protected])
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
Credits
Authors Project Coordinator
Shashwat Srivastava Shubhanjan Chatterjee
Apeksha Singh
Proofreader
Reviewer Linda Morris
Deepak Vohra
Indexer
Acquisition Editor Rekha Nair
Wilson D'Souza
Production Coordinator
Development Editor Alwin Roy
Swapna Verlekar
Cover Work
Technical Editors Alwin Roy
Kedar Bhat
Vanjeet D'souza
Merwine Machado
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
About the Authors
Shashwat Srivastava has been an avid coder since high school and has acquired
technical proficiency in various programming languages with an experience of over twelve
years. He is a strong advocate of open source tools and hosts his projects at SourceForge. He
has successfully participated in Google Summer of Code programs 2010 and 2011.
Shashwat has graduated as a Bachelor of Electronics and Communication from Delhi College
of Engineering in 2011. During his college days, he has published websites for several clients
including his college library and electronics department.
Currently, he is working as an application developer at Oracle. He actively contributes to
Drupal and has developed modules such as DrupalChat, DXMPP, and Chatroom. His keen
interest lies in web application development and as a result he has built several Facebook
and Twitter applications. Passionate about programming he loves to blog about PHP,
JavaScript, MySQL, Linux, Android, and other insanities at http://www.botskool.com/.
When unplugged, he enjoys playing chess and computer games.
First of all, I need to thank my mother and father for being a constant source
of inspiration and their endless support during the book writing process.
Also, I would like to thank my dear brother Anmol for all the love and care.

A huge thanks to all my friends who have given their valuable inputs on this
book.

Also, I would like to thank the team at Packt Publishing, along with David,
Wilson, Swapna, Shubhanjan, and other editors and reviewers. Without
them you wouldn't be reading this book.

Finally, I want to thank most my friend and co-author, Apeksha, who has
been with me since the beginning. She has put in a lot of efforts and worked
diligently to make sure this book is complete.

Thank you for reading this book. I hope you find it interesting and useful.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
Apeksha Singh is a software engineer and an open source hobbyist and enthusiast.
She has recently graduated as a Computer Science Engineer from Jaypee Institute of
Information Technology and has extensive experience in web development and search engine
optimization. She has authored articles and research papers in these fields. She has seven
years of experience in the field of programming and loves data structures.
Obsessed with new technology, Apeksha keeps track of the latest developments in the world
of technology and likes to update others and share her views by blogging at http://www.
botskool.com/. She has also worked in the field of embedded systems and robotics. In
her free time, she reads novels and plays sports such as badminton and tennis. She can be
reached at her personal blog (http://apeksha0701.blogspot.com).
I would like to thank the three most important people in my life, my dad for
being my role model, my mom for all the love and support and my brother
Abhinav for making me believe in myself.

Also, I would like to thank my dear friends for coping with my occasional
absence during the book writing stage and helping me whenever required.
Most important, I would like to thank, my co-author Shashwat Srivastava for
making this dream come true.

A special thanks to the team at Packt Publishing without whom this book
wouldn't have been possible.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
About the Reviewer
Deepak Vohra is a consultant and a principal member of the NuBean.com software
company. Deepak is a Sun Certified Java Programmer and Web Component Developer, and
has worked in the fields of XML and Java programming and J2EE for over five years.
Deepak is the co-author of Pro XML Development with Java Technology, Apress and was the
technical reviewer for WebLogic: The Definitive Guide, O'Reilly Media, and also the technical
reviewer for Ruby Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Course Technology PTR, and
the technical editor for Prototype and Scriptaculous in Action, Manning Publications.
Deepak is also the author of JDBC 4.0 and Oracle JDeveloper for J2EE Development,
Processing XML documents with Oracle JDeveloper 11gh, and EJB 3.0 Database
Persistence with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, all books published by Packt Publishing.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
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This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014
Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Creating a New Facebook Application 5
Introduction 5
Downloading PHP-SDK and setting up your environment 8
Registering a new Facebook application 10
Configuring a Facebook application 13
Getting authorization and a valid session for the user 15
Requesting specific permissions from the user 17
Logging out a user 20
Handling navigation in an iFrame Facebook application 21
Handling form submission in an iFrame Facebook application 23
Dynamically resizing an iFrame Facebook application 24
Determining whether a Facebook page has been liked by a user 27
Chapter 2: Be a part of Social Graph 31
Introduction 32
Retrieving a user's information 34
Liking a post 36
Commenting on a given post 38
Setting status message 41
Deleting a picture, post, or comment of a user 43
Retrieving the current user's friendlist 44
Creating a post on the wall of a user's friend 46
Posting a picture to a specific album of the user 49
Retrieving the names of the user's friends who have liked a particular
status message 53
Creating an event 55
Paging through a user's friends 57
Searching through a user's feed 59
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by REKHA NADENDLA on 2nd December 2011
375 N STEPHANIE ST SUITE 1411, HENDERSON, 89014