I have to provide Facebook integration to an app that is mostly hybrid in its design ... i.e, most of the code is written as html5 pages (bundled with the app). I would prefer using the webview method of login to Facebook, but it appears that if I do use the webview method as opposed to using Facebook SDK for iOS, the user will have to enter a password every-time.
Can someone verify if my understanding is correct. This is what is I could gather from https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ios/login-tutorial:
Embedded WebView Login Dialog
...
Advantages:
...
Disadvantages:
Web-based dialogs tend to be slower.
People have to fill in their login credentials every time they go through the login flow.
Special considerations:
...
I created a sample app embedded with Facebook login awhile ago too. Yes, web-based dialogs tend to be slower. However, the user don't have to login their credential every time they go through it. As I tested, the user will just need to enter their info for the first time login only. Nevertheless, the user will need to login when his/her session finish. Please refer to Facebook API docs about how long is the session.
I hope this answer your question somehow. Cheer.
Related
It seems this used to be possible, but not anymore. Here's my dilemma: I'm creating an iPad educational software app, and I want to let students log in with their Google Apps for Education accounts using OpenID-Connect.
... I guess my first question is: is the current Google+ SDK the right way to perform login against GAFE? What about the forthcoming "Google Classroom"?
So say I do this - the student pushes the "login with google button", the sdk performs an app switch to safari and lets the user log in to their google account, push the permissioning buttons, and app-switches back to my app, and the user is now logged in. Fine. At the end of the class period, the user logs out of my app and hands in their device. The next period, though, another student logs in, and because the first user has forgotten to also log out of google in safari, the second user has access to their account.
... My second question is: is this a valid concern? Seems like this would be a pretty common usage pattern.
... Third question - can I get around this? Can I make Google+ sdk use an internal UIWebView, or no web stuff at all? This is what seems like used to be possible, but no longer...
EDIT: Spoke to google tech support for apps-for-enterprise (thx M!) and they say that there is no way to authenticate against google openid-connect without going through a browser. This is, I believe, a security problem - students being kids, they will forget to log out of the browser, and the next kids will get into mischief. Oh well.
The GPPSignin class describes itself as:
It provides single sign-on via the Google+ app (if installed), Chrome
for iOS (if installed), or Mobile Safari.
Internal web views are not mentioned. You may need to implement OAuth2.0 on your own to allow your internal UIWebView to manage authorization.
Google publishes an API which includes a method to signOut. You can use it at your app's discretion in addition to the SDK requirement that a user be able to sign out manually.
https://developers.google.com/+/mobile/ios/api/interface_g_p_p_sign_in
We have an ios app that uses native Facebook login just fine.
Then we also have a website (app is basically an optimized client for it) where people can login via Facebook too. When they open our website in mobile safari, they are directed to Facebook pages to authenticate there and it works, but.. it is still far from native and users have to retype credentials they often have in ios already.
So could it be possible to to somehow launch system fb authentication for just a web page (maybe using some clever URL schema?) and get granted token back to web?
Difficult way
As described here http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2012/07/29/1/oauth2-simplified#mobile-apps you could find URL scheme to trigger the native iOS app for app authorization:
fbauth://authorize?redirect_uri=[redirect_uri]&client_id=[client_id]&response_type=token
But if you call that link it's not possible to have a redirection. You could try to hack that redirection but maybe you could not find a way out.
A secure way to solve that problem is to use a SSO token to authenticate user on your App when he logs in, and next on Safari take a redirection, with a custom url to your APP, that do as bridge to FB App via Token stored in your APP. After FB authentication you can directly redirect user back to your landing page in Safari. As said by #Lego it's an alternative way to direct authenticate that could be made by going deep to custom URL used by FB.
No, it is not yet possible to directly authenticate the user via the native Facebook App, but it's possible to authenticate the user using a custom URL scheme which opens your native iOS app which then handles the authentication flow:
The user authenticates natively with your iOS App. You then store the user login (not password) in your app (i.e. using NSUserDefaults).
Then the user opens your web page in Mobile Safari. You redirect the user via a custom url scheme to your app (i.e. using myapp://authenticate). Apple documentation on implementing custom URL schemes: click
Now, if you have an active FB session in your iOS app, you can either directly redirect the user back to your landing page in Mobile Safari, passing the access token via url get parameter or you first re-authenticate the user, displaying a login view with the user name pre-filled, which you have stored in your iOS app before (step 1) and then redirect the user to your landing page, again all depending on session state and your security needs.
For opening face book app you can use Custom URL scheme. But i am not sure if u can authenticate user from it. In case if you could also then it will be confined up to the fb account which is already configured on that device app .so better try to use face book api or something
I don't get your question exactly but i think as per your question you want to create fb app Login in safari or in your custom web view.
is this perfect ?
as per my knowledge web view is different thing and native app is different thing.
if you are Login in web view then no need to check anything token or other thing because it will give you Logout thing there.
but if you are Login in your application then "developer.facebook.com" will definitely help you.
and yes, you will do most of the thing in your app as native facebook app do.
Hope it help....
There are three different login methods in iOS:
Login via web pop-up
Login via Safari
Login via Native App
and one more in iOS 6 - login via native pop-up controller using iOS 6 Facebook credentials.
In my case, I'm using FB comments plugin inside UIWebView and I'd like to allow user to leave comments there. For that I'm using FB login via web pop-up. Using other methods lead to the two different results:
FB comments plugin not loading at all
FB comments plugin loaded, but user is still unauthorized (login via Safari)
Whereas I have no idea, how to deal with the first one, the second one happens I think because cookies (or FB credentials) are stored in safari, but not in my App, which is required for comments plugin to understand that the user has logged in.
In this case, I'm wondering - when and where should we use each of the FB login approaches?
And what should I use in my case?
I recommend using Parse to handle social account management. It's super easy to integrate with your code and free for your purposes. Take a look. Just sign up to Parse, Create an App and follow the easy quickstart guide. They also have great documentation and forums to help you out.
My plan for this web app is that it needs the user to log in with LinkedIn, and the user's id on the site and database is their LinkedIn id.
So, the most convenient and elegant thing would seem to be to have no "native" login at all, and just have the user log in with LinkedIn from the start.
Having seen recent disaster for Twitter api developers, I now wonder if this is considered too risky. I am assuming that it is allowed by LinkedIn (haven't checked that yet).
Alternatives could be:
native login then login with LinkedIn after that.
OpenId login and then login LinkedIn after that.
Somehow have a backup login incase linkedin kicks me off.
Any thoughts on the main idea or alternatives? Any other ideas?
As soon as you require a user to create a native login, you're making the usability of your app more challenging IMO. I hate, hate, hate it when I'm forced to create a new account on a site when a single button press would work.
Of course, usability would be at near zero in the unlikely circumstance that LinkedIn's provider no longer works for your app. So, there are tradeoffs.
Does LinkedIn provide access to the user's e-mail address when you authorize them? If that's the case, you could just login with LinkedIn. If LinkedIn's provider no longer works for your app, you could send users an email with a temporary password in an authoritative way. If they don't provide an e-mail address via their provider, then you'll be forced to collect it separately directly from the user (and potentially verify it in case the user made a typo or something).
I'm fairly new to iOS development, and I'm starting work on an App that will include some simple Facebook integration. As a proof of concept, I made a bare-bones, view-based application that has a simple button to log a user in to Facebook, and then another button to post a status update.
This is all well and good, but in a real world scenario, a user shouldn't have to login to Facebook every time they want to use the Facebook-integrated features of my App. My question is this: how would I go about persisting a user's login to a file, or to a database for use in a later launch of my App?
Ideally this solution would use Facebook's iOS SDK, but I wouldn't be opposed to building my own authentication system using their Graph API. The advantage of using Facebook's official iOS SDK, though, is that it can use the login information already associated with the phone's Facebook application (if installed), or the login associated with facebook.com on mobile Safari.
I'm not providing my current source code, on the basis that this is a general enough question to not require the specifics of my Facebook SDK usage. However, if you think it would be helpful, I'd be more than happy to post my code.
Thanks!
you wouldn't do that. check out facebook SSO in their SDK ( see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/mobile/ ). You request the facebook token everytime you use it or otherwise get an long-term (read: use access token offline_access) access token and persist this token to the NSUserDefaults for use in your app. ( see http://coffeeshopped.com/2011/01/saving-sessions-with-the-facebook-ios-sdk )