Hi folks! Today, while mounting some of my projects into AIR, I realized that it would be great if I could pusblish AIR badges over Facebook. You know what? That is possible! I have created a simple flex application + facebook application that, based on parameters, generates AIR badge for an app. Now its time to share the stuff with you, feel free to publish your AIR badges, and let me know how do you like it.
onStream – The Broadcasting Machine is the name of my latest flash project. Slogan says: “Broadcast LIVE video to your friends or the whole world from a computer or mobile. Watch other people broadcasting their webcamera, conferences, shows or movies.” With this flash application you can broadcast your webcamera, tv card, desktop or movies (read the section “What can be broadcasted?”). With different broadcasting settings you can broadcast to unlimited number of viewers as well as make private videochats. Based on your connection speed, choose appropriate quality for your broadcasts from 320×160 px webcamera resolution with 11kHz sound sampling up to high definition broadcasts.
The application is located on http://onstream.yoz.sk and there also exist a facebook application http://apps.facebook.com/onstream/. You can also publish and run the application from facebook newsfeed stream.
Believe it or not, facebook changed part of its api again. Since today, authorizing for iframe applications does not work the same way it used to. Previously it was enough to redirect:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize
?client_id=268718683475
&redirect_uri=http://apps.facebook.com/blogoauthgraph/
&scope=publish_stream,user_photos,user_photo_video_tags
… where facebook authorized your app and redirects back to the:
http://apps.facebook.com/blogoauthgraph/
?session=123456...
… where session was valid access_token.
While The Facebook Graph API article becomes pretty popular and a lot of developers keep asking me to publish some practices I use, I managed to create this blog post. Here is a list o some functions you may want to extend FacebookOAuthGraph Class with.
Things are much easier when they works synchronously, you just ask for what you want and thats it, but with flash you always have to count on with asynchrony. For example you are waiting on some requests to complete or 3rd party to log you on etc. The issue is, you know you want to execute something, with custom properties, but you have to do that just after some asynchronous event dispatched. E.g. you want to update status with some message, but you need to connect to facebook first. Here comes the handy Callbacks class. What it does is, it stores your wishes and executes when things are prepared.
This article continues my exploration of best facebook graph api integration into your flash app. Before continue reading, make sure you understand the previous article. Due to huge interest, I am adding codes that makes your flash app working with graph api within facebook iframe. Try this app live on http://apps.facebook.com/blogoauthgraph/, notice once you get there, you are redirected to grant permissions (if not authorized or granted already) and then redirected back to the app, where you are connected and ready to use graph api.
As previously mentioned, facebook released a new Graph API. It is based on OAuth 2.0 protocol (old authorization token also works). While it is fresh thing, there is no much ActionScript stuff around, so I came with FacebookOAuthGraph class. This class is meant to be used as an abstract class, while it contains just the basic authentication algorithm and call method to request data. It stores access token in SharedObject, so next time you came into app, you get connected on background without noticing (no popup etc.). Your token should expire in 24 hours.
Few days before while I was working on TwitterLogger Class for ActionScript 3 I discovered OAuth – an open protocol to allow secure API authorization . While reading all the stuff about OAuth and PHP SDKs, I noticed one statement somewhere (can’t find it nowhere) that Facebook was in fact using OAuth for its Facebook Connect tool but some derived version. This has now changed! Facebook is standardizing communication and authorization by introducing Open Graph and OAtuh 2.0.
The Rubik’s Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. My latest project was to create a 3D engine (I have used papervision) based on this logic + integrate with facebook. Finally, the game is ready and you can play s.Oliver ‘s Cube on Facebook.
Those are hard times. Facebook discontinued support for Notifications.send method March 1, 2010. Calling this method returns error code 3 (Unknown method). Instead, developers are directed to use other communication channels. From those some are not yet even a part of facebook-actionscript-api yet (dashboard) other not published from facebook (invites) and those that may work via api are experimental and may change any day (activities).
Excluding streams as communication channel, the only usable way, these days, to acquire some new facebook application users is using <Fb:request-form> (part of FBML). When your application is IFrame, you may find interesting that you are able to use FBML within your HTML files. In order to make this happen, you have to use <Fb:serverFbml> (renders the FBML on a Facebook server inside an iframe). Now, lets see how to open request form in your Facebook Iframe application:
