I'm trying to authenticate my user on FB with my app in a simple manner, the iOS SDK has this SSO explanation and that's pretty much it, and it seems a bit extreme since I pretty much have to wrap up my entire app in FB goodness, at least that's what they guide you through.
Is there just a simple way, be it with the SDK or some other manner, to guide the user through the OAuth process and retrieve the access token and user data, like name, email and birthdate?
One shortcut here is using something like Parse to handle it for you. They actually also include a very nicely made login view controller that does exactly what you're looking for. You can see it here.
Related
Is there a way to post on the user wall without having to do login?
Going thought the documentation i can do this but the user has to do login, which i don´t want cause this is a simple app.
I know there is a tutorial in the facebook developers website, because i found it and only later i realize that. Something using "publish_stream" permissions, if someone can point me in the right direction i appreciate.
It is not automatic (which would violate Platform Policy anyway), but you can use the Feed Dialog for this:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/feed/
we are developing an iOS App using Adobe Flex/Air. The app uses a web service that needs user authentication via facebook login. At the moment, we use server side authentication: There's a login URL displayed in a WebView where the facebook login is done. This way, we get an access_token that can be used on the server side.
This works perfectly but it would really be much better if we could use Single Sign-on with the facebook ios app. As far as I have read, this should work on the client side but I haven't found a way to authenticate the user on the server side.
facebook's access_tokens are valid either for use on the server-side or for the client side so an access_token from the client-side login won't work for the server side.
Thanks in advance for your ideas,
Henk
As far as I can see, you're making this far more complicated than it's really intended to be. Leverage the Facebook iOS SDK, and all of the heavy lifting involved with authenticating the user within your app is handled by the Facebook SDK. There's no need to independently provide sign-in sheets and manage access token exchange between the app's local storage and Facebook's servers without the convenience of the entire Facebook SDK.
This link shows you how to implement SSO natively within your iOS app. It's real simple.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/mobile/ios/build/#implementsso
Then, I understand that you're keeping authentication information or central user database information on an external server. The best way to synchronize the information between the FB client and your own servers is to simply check the login information returned by the FB SDK with your server after you receive it.
Here's a simple breakdown:
Log the user in using Facebook's standard SDK (see the link above).
In the -didLogin method (or whatever the equivalent is in your Adobe AIR environment), check the access token returned by FB with your server. Not sure what server architecture you're using, but it's safe to say that this will go on outside of the FB SDK. Also, save the access token in your app's user defaults so that the user won't have to login again next time. This whole process should (and inherently will) feel much quicker than it sounds.
If the check with the server returns successfully, notify the user of a successful login. If not, display an error view explaining the reason the user was rejected/not logged in.
Why do it this way? The reason is fairly simple. It's safe to assume that the reason you're having a user login to your app via Facebook is so that you can make requests for the user's Facebook information (i.e. feeds, photos, likes, comments, etc.). The easiest (and best) way to do this is through the FB SDK its self. The SDK takes care of a lot of stuff behind the scenes like access token validation over time, extension of token life, validity of token, and so on. This way, you won't have to worry nearly as much about syncronizing the server information and real-time client information when changes take place. Just authenticate via the FB iOS SDK, and do the rest of your own processing afterward.
Comment below if there's anything I should clarify or even if I missed the point of your question entirely--I tend to get on a roll and may stray from the point. :)
Cheers!
The Kraken
I'm going to create a page which will download user's activity and save it in an .xml file because my iphone app needs to process it. The problem is that I cannot prompt the user for login-password... so I was wondering if there is a sort of permanent key that I can use to access into linkedin and gplus?
Thank you.
Google+
I can field the Google+ part of your question :)
You can access your users' public activity using the REST API's activity list method. To identify who they are you'll need to send them through an OAuth flow during which they will authorize you to know who they are on Google+.
The best way to get started doing server side OAuth flows in Google+ is to grab one of the starter projects and go through the included readme. That will give you a working project to copy code out of, or develop upon.
I'd include a code sample to show you how it works, but I don't know what would best apply to your back end :)
Linkedin
I'm far from an expert on their APIs, but it looks like the flow would be similar using OAuth.
I have a question as I have been looking for the answer on google, but I don't know how to phrase it correctly :P.
I am writing a little app for iOS using Facebook API. I would like apps to communicate between each other, not a lot, just a little bit of data, between users who use that app. Does Facebook support something like that or do I have to implement my own server side in order to have such behavior?
Facebook doesn't support anything like that. You will have to develop your own backend for something such as that. Each of the App's Users who log into Facebook, create a corresponding User in your backend database, storing the Facebook ID of that person. Now you're building your own database where you can handle relationships, and communicate with each other.
I want to connect my app to Facebook in order to post on the user's wall. I want the user to click to post a message on his Wall, the pop-up of the js SDK should appear, he would login and authorize and get redirected to the home page as the pop-up disappears.
I was trying the fb_graph gem but had some hard troubles and I want to know: Is there a simpler way to do it?
Note that I don't want to make the user able to login in my app with Facebook, just post to his wall.
As Facebook does not offer any Ruby API, you will have to choose between using the JS SDK or implementing a Facebook share link.
If you only want to post in the user's wall, I recommend the second option because of ease and nature. You can customize the content of the post this way.
If you decide to go the JS way, you will have to:
Create a FB app.
Include FB SDK into your page.
Initialize the SDK with your app settings.
Ask for permissions to the user in order to post into her wall.
Assign a button to a function where you check for login. If she's already logged, show a window to post into the wall (FB popup or your own form, as the iframe dialogs are only available inside Facebook pages).
There is another alternative to step 5 by using Graph API and an access token, but it's a little bit more complicated and I don't recommend it if you are new to FB development.
I think, essentially, it's all or nothing when it comes to Facebook authentication. You're asking for permission to take over the user's identity and post on their Facebook wall - there will definitely be some kind of authentication and user approval. It's not a totally trivial process.
I'm sure you've looked already, but if you are OK using any of the social plugins that Facebook offers (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/), that might be an easier option to achieve what you're looking for.
If not, you'll have to gain a user's permission and post on the wall the way Facebook describes on their site. There's another gem, called Koala (https://github.com/arsduo/koala) that is pretty easy to use as well, but you can also take a look through the fb_graph documentation and see which pieces of code are applicable to your needs and duplicate that functionality.
The best source of information is on Facebook's site (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/), where they describe the process in detail:
You can publish to the Facebook graph by issuing HTTP POST requests to the appropriate connection URLs, using an user access token or an app access token (for Open Graph Pages).
and
Most write operations require extended permissions for the active user. See the authentication guide for details on how you can request extended permissions from the user during the authentication step.
The first time I looked at this stuff I was totally overwhelmed, but play around with it and it will make a lot more sense.
I just saw #manuelpedrera 's answer, and that's a good step-by-step guide. Short answer: there's no shortcut.
Koala is a Facebook library for Ruby, supporting the Graph API (including the batch requests and photo uploads), the REST API, realtime updates, test users, and OAuth validation.
Take a look at Koala gem: https://github.com/arsduo/koala