Facebook Graph API Development with Flash

324 Pages·2010·14.01 MB·English

by  Michael James Williams

Facebook Graph API
Development with Flash
Beginner's Guide
Build social Flash applications fully integrated with the
Facebook Graph API
Michael James Williams
Facebook Graph API Development with Flash
Beginner's Guide
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
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First published: December 2010
Production Reference: 1081210
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK
ISBN 978-1-849690-74-4
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman ([email protected])
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
Michael James Williams Aditya Belpathak
Reviewer Project Team Leader
Emanuele Feronato Lata Basantani
Acquisition Editor Project Coordinator
David Barnes Vishal Bodwani
Development Editor Proofreader
Hyacintha D'Souza Lynda Sliwoski
Technical Editors Graphics
Paramanand Bhat Geetanjali Sawant
Namita Sahni
Production Coordinator
Copy Editor Arvindkumar Gupta
Laxmi Subramanian
Cover Work
Indexer Arvindkumar Gupta
Monica Ajmera Mehta
About the Author
Michael James Williams is a technical concept writer and freelance Flash developer. He
is the technical editor for the tutorial website Activetuts+, and also runs his own blog about
Flash game development.
He currently lives in England, in a nice little town that has both a river and a canal, and has
been using Facebook since it was just some site that his American housemate wouldn't stop
talking about.
You can follow Michael on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MichaelJW.
His public Facebook profile is available at http://on.fb.me/MichaelJamesWilliams.
Activetuts+ can be found at http://active.tutsplus.com/.
Michael's website is http://michaeljameswilliams.com/.
Acknowledgement
I'd like to thank my Dad, for teaching me how to be technical; my Mum, for teaching me
how to write; and my little sister, for not being too jealous that I beat her to being a
published author.
I also want to thank Ryan Henson Creighton, for inadvertently introducing me to David
Barnes; all the Flash developers that make up the awesome community I'm happy to be a part
of, particularly Bram, Ryan, Rasmus, Jeff and Steve, and Daniel; Tom, for letting me use his
tutorial as a template for my first (and still most popular!) piece of writing; Ian Yates and the
rest of Envato™, for enabling me to keep working and earning a living while writing this book;
Keith Peters, for providing the awesome MinimalComponents I used throughout this book;
and everyone that's ever commented on anything I've written – I really appreciate that.
Finally, I must express my appreciation for and thanks to David, Vishal, Hyacintha,
Paramanand, Priya, Namita, and everyone else at Packt Publishing for all their support, help,
and hard work. I know I can be stubborn, but it's been a pleasure to work with you all. In
particular, thank you to David, who not only approved this book in the first place, but also
gave me a huge amount of guidance in all aspects of writing it. And of course, I have to thank
Emanuele, not just for doing the technical review of this book, but also for his blog, which
(by a funny turn of events) was one of my key inspirations to start writing about Flash in the
first place.
About the Reviewer
Emanuele Feronato has been studying programming languages since the early eighties,
with a particular interest in web and game development. He taught online programming for
the European Social Fund and now co-owns a web development company in Italy where he
also works as a lead programmer. His blog, www.emanueleferonato.com, is one of the
most visited blogs about indie programming.
I would like to thank Vishal Bodwani at Packt Publishing for the
opportunity to review this book, and my little daughter Kimora for
making my life happy.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction 7
What's so great about Facebook? 7
It's popular 8
Numbers 9
It's everywhere 9
It's interesting to develop for 11
Web hosts 11
What's a web host? 11
Why do you need one? 12
How do you choose one? 12
Useful software 13
What about domain names? 13
How much AS3 knowledge is required? 14
The source code 15
Powered by… 17
Debugging 18
Watch out for caching 19
A final note… 21
Chapter 2: Welcome to the Graph 23
Accessing the Graph API through a Browser 24
Time for action – loading a Page 24
Accessing the Graph API through AS3 27
Time for action – retrieving a Page's information in AS3 27
Time for action – deserializing a JSON object 32
Time for action – visualizing the info 33
Understanding connections