Add facebook iOS SDK without Xcode for a Phonegap Build app - ios

Question

I've been able to successfully build my iOS app without using Xcode. My app is a collection of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, along with my config.xml that I'm able to compile with Phonegap Build.
The app's basic functionality has been tested on iPhones and works well, but now I want to add a social layer to the app with the FacebookConnect plugin for Phonegap Build. However, the documentation on GitHub requires the app to be setup in Xcode.
Without using Xcode, is there a way to download the SDK (not as a .pkg) and add it to my project files that I upload to Phonegap Build to complile? If so, where do I get the files, which files do I need, and where do I include these files in my project structure?
Here is my current project structure:
-config.xml
-index.html
-includes
--css
--js
Perhaps there is a way of doing this with GitHub, but I've never done pull requests or anything like that. I simply work in my text editor and am not sure how to pull from GitHub.
Phonegap Build Plugins
Thank you for any help you can offer on this!

Answer 1

I have successfully implemented the FacebookConnect Plugin for Phonegap Build on Windows without Xcode.
I recommend just following the instructions on the Phonegap Build Plugins page and ignore the instructions on the GitHub page (which talks about Xcode and other things you don't need for the Build plugin). They have now updated the GitHub page instructions to direct Phonegap Build users away from the GitHub instructions and over to the Phonegap Build Plugins page.
For Step 1 (Setting your app up on facebook), select Native iOS App and the Bundle ID is the same as your "id" in your config.xml (i.e. com.company.appname) and you can set the App Store IDs to "0" while testing.
For Step 2, make sure you use facebook-js-sdk.js. At one time there was a typo.
A good way to test things out is to paste the content of the example Simple app on GitHub into a new index.html file and upload it with your normal config.xml file to Phonegap Build . I did this for one build on my app and then after I tested it, just uploaded my normal index.html file. The only change you will need to make in the index.html of the Example app is to put your Facebook App ID at the bottom in the FB.init function. I also changed response.session to response.authResponse to match the Facebook JS SDK, but I'm not sure if that is necessary.
Be sure to update your config.xml file with everything mentioned in Step 3. I also added the following code:
<access origin="http://m.facebook.com" />
<access origin="http://graph.facebook.com" />
<access origin="http://api.facebook.com" />
<access origin="http://fbcdn.net" subdomains="true" />
<access origin="http://akamaihd.net" subdomains="true" />
The above code is not necessary if you have the following in your config.xml file already:
<access origin="*" />
The FacebookConnect plugin is using the Facebook JS SDK, which you can learn more about here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/javascript/.
Also, one other issue I ran into that the Phonegap Build Team is working on is that when asking for permissions, you cannot just ask for the Basic Permissions by leaving off the scope option. For now, you must include at least one scope option for the login function to work.
function fbLogin () {
FB.login(function(response) {
if (response.authResponse) {
alert('User Login Success!');
} else {
alert('User cancelled login or did not fully authorize.');
}
}, { scope: "email" });
}
Most developers probably want to ask for more than the Basic Permissions, so this shouldn't be that big of an issue.
My responses above are from discussions about the Facebook Plugin over on the Phonegap Build Support Site. You can learn more about the plugin and current issues and solutions there.
It took me a little while to figure this stuff out, so hopefully this will help others save some time.