I'm trying to create a Facebook canvas app that allow users to write a custom Wall post and tag some friends. I'm familiar with stand alone rails apps, but I'm having a hard time grasping API interactions.
I've came across with a few gems (Facebooker2, Koala and fb_graph) and the Heroku integration that provide a easier way to use the GraphAPI, but I wasn't able to find updated examples on how to integrate them with a rails app from scratch. So far, the only one that I've found was this sample from fb_graph.
It seems that this type of application is pretty common of Facebook, so I was expecting to find more info on the community. Is there a better way to start developing for Facebook using Rails or should I just pick one of those gems and stick with it until I grasp the concepts?
I was able to create an Facebook canvas app using the fb_graph sample. Probably there are better solutions to handle Facebook authorization inside canvas, but the sample is a great start. Here is my project, a Music Quiz inside Facebook: https://github.com/luizbranco/MusicQuiz
I built my first Facebook app from scratch using Koala. Their wiki on Github is absolutely fantastic and everything is well explained.
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Im programming an app that has to be able to allow the users to sign up using their soundcloud accounts, so far I haven't found any usefull tutorial using Omniauth, Can anyone help me giving some tips to start with?
I gave a presentation to my local meetup about integrating OmniAuth into your application using a demo application here. You can fork it and go through the steps in section 3 of the README. There are also some slides you can look at here.
There's a lot of refactoring that needs to still be done, but it was designed to be a basic intro start to a bunch of people who had never used OmniAuth before.
I also list resources that helped with putting together the presentation. I highly recommend checking them out.
Although the examples are not with the omniauth-soundcloud, it should work similarly.
I want to build an app that use in the backend Ruby on Rails. However my problem comes in the lack of information i found on it. My goals is not just to create a website but an application that interacts with it, like my android facebook app when pressing menu I get button like logout and so on.
I am wondering if their exists tutorial on how to build an application but using rails or should i scrap my entire website and do it in php. I am looking for guide and tutorial. Thanks in advance
You can build an app on any platform and make it interact with your Rails-based server using HTTP requests (like AJAX).
You can send information back and forth using JSON or XML; you would probably need to make a new set of actions for the app to use.
There is no reason to use PHP. ever.
A little unclear from your original question, but if you are looking to create a mobile app using Ruby (and a structure similar to Ruby on Rails) then you may be interested in Rhomobile. It is a cross-platform mobile application framework that uses Ruby for its backend code, and follows a structure similar to (older) Ruby on Rails versions.
From what I understand of your problem, you want to use the robustness of Ruby to develop a native app (not just another app that mirrors a website).
The best thing I know of for this is RubyMotion. The bummer is the cost ($200). But then you would get to accomplish your task.
I am new to Ruby On Rails. I want to create a simple application which has a home page with a search box and a submit button. The search box is used for searching keywords on twitter dynamically. The application connects to twitter, takes all the feeds containing the keyword searched and displays back on the home page of my application. Can anyone please guide me how should i go about it ? I want to create an application from scratch. Please site any example for the same. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Thanks,
Bhargav
If you really want to start from scratch and not use any gems for it, you should go to the Twitter API reference, and start from there
I would recomend you use the twitter gem
RailsCasts has a nice episode on it, but the episode for Twitter Integration is not for free.
If you are looking into use Rails for a long time, a subscription is well worth it though.
Hope this helps
I recently wrote a small Twitter app from scratch (without the Twitter gem), maybe it is helpful:
https://github.com/sos4nt/jack-of-all-tweets
There's an instance running on Heroku: https://jack-of-all-tweets.herokuapp.com
You should probably use the twitter gem: https://github.com/sferik/twitter
Apologies in advance for a rather non-specific question:
I am looking for some guidance on how 'best' to get a Rails app to talk to FB/Twitter etc and I see that there are options like Koala (https://github.com/arsduo/koala) for FB (and others for Twitter and so on.)
But then, there's also OmniAuth - which is for Authentication - but again for FB/Twitter/LinkedIn etc.
So how do the pieces of this puzzle fit together - do I need to use both OmniAuth and Koala for example if my Rails app needs to integrate with FB? Do I need just one? Is there something one uses OmniAuth for first and then Koala for the rest? A few sentences about the lay of the land here would really help me understand what each does and how they fit together.
Thanks!
Omniauth is simply an authentication library. It doesn't actually interface with the rest of the Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn API. The only thing you do with it is bypass custom user profiles in favor of "Log In With Facebook".
Koala and other libraries similar to that are just rails-specific API interfaces. You can use them within your app to do deep integration into their Facebook or Twitter profile.
I'm looking to develop my first Facebook application and therefore looking for some advice on where to get started.
I've spent a few hours browsing Facebook's Developer Wiki, Facebooker library, looking at the sample chapters in "Developing Facebook Applications with Rails" by Pragmatic Programmers, etc.
Since FB is constantly changing their API, and Facebook Connect is newer than the aforementioned book, does anyone have any advice on where to get started?
Create a Facebook app and new Rails app and play around with integrating Connect using Facebooker.
Getting these components to work will help you understand the FB application configuration process, loading the appropriate javascript files, and figuring out how to read the FB session in an Rails app.
Once you have that figured out try creating a normal FB IFrame app.
One of the things that I think is super important is to try to keep your focus pretty narrow when getting started. If you try to tackle learning: ruby, rails, facebook api, facebook gems, web development, html, css all at the same moment you'll probably get burnt out and give up. Holy smokes that's a lot of stuff to learn! The trick you should do is figure out how small chunks until you get it a little, then move onto the next thing. Keep your goals super small.
How I would do it if I were you:
Start by building a new rails application
Then learn how to build a landing page in rails
Then make it look good with html and css
Then learn how to make it better with something like bootstrap (and learn about gems)
From there you could look into calling a simple API from facebook, and the facebooker gem.
Getting started with Ruby on Rails is something that is a little daunting at first, but after you get started it gets a lot easier. After running Ruby on Rails bootcamps for Startup Accelerators, Harvard Business School, in Times Square, Boston, and Pittsburgh, I started http://www.firehoseonline.com. It's a video tutorial to get started, so you should check out that site.
My advice is to learn as much as you can by actually writing the code. Don't get caught up too much in the details and the specifics. If a tutorial gives you some code to write, and some information, and you don't absorb all the information at first, keep going. Afterwards go back to the material, and once you have gone through the whole process of writing your first application a lot of the pieces will fit together.