ReflexUtil and Facebook API

Is not like I don't have enough fodder for blogging, but I wanted to point out a couple people who are doing interesting work. Casey over at Tater Salad wrote about his experiences with ReflexUtil, but he's too modest to say that he did the code for modularizing the library. ReflexUtil is great for nudging into place those objects interactively. Considering I code in jEdit and don't have Flex Builder's Design View I'm sure this will come in handy sometime.

And Jason over at PB King has put a good amount of work on a Facebook AS3 API which was originally an internal project here at Terralever. There are a lot of updates that he's added. If you are looking for an alternative to the as3facebooklib this is it. I'd say that the main points of difference between the two libraries is that this one is more Delegate-based, while as3facebooklib is event-based.

Happy coding!

Facebook Developer's Garage - Phoenix - Nov. 14th

Nov 14th at the Tempe Center for the Arts in Tempe, AZ Terralever is hosting a
Facebook Developer's Garage. Highlights of the event include a presentation by Dave Morin of Facebook on the platform and a detailed look at the evolution of the Red Bull Roshambull application by Nate Warner of Red Bull. I will be giving a short presentation on Flash integration for Facebook also.

We have been able to expand the number of seats available to 200. Please
register if you want to go, as there is a very good chance this will fill up. Plus say hi if you do!

http://www.terralever.com/Facebook-Developers-Garage-Phoenix/

Facebook Platform API for AS3, and group.

I mentioned briefly that we're building an api for working with Facebook's new Platform. As part of the 'release early, release often' open source mantra, we're releasing what we have right now. Its not fleshed out, but I think that the model that we've built is extensible and easy to use.

Download the API here

Our Facebook Group with more information, documentation, etc.

Here's some of our current features -

Authentication- The Facebook object handles authentication and security automatically. Its transparent, you just don't have to think about it.

Ease of use- Authentication can either be 'desktop' or 'web' style. This essentially means that you can test your app locally in desktop mode, and then deploy it web style. Our current testing model is to check a configuration xml to see what our authentication style should be:

if(configXML..mode == "desktop")
          {
              //start us up in desktop mode
              var config_api_key:String = configXML..api_key;
              var config_secret:String = configXML..secret;
              fBook.startDesktopSession(config_api_key, config_secret);
          }
          else
          {
              //start us up in widget mode
              fBook.startWidgetSession();
          }

And so we deploy a different configXML file on our server which doesn't contain our secret for use in 'widget' mode, but we can test the flash locally, dramatically speeding development time!

Proxy support - When developing a Facebook application, you'll want to pass all requests to the Facebook API through your server for security reasons. This server should just mimic the Facebook api, and work in the same way:

 fBook.useRedirectServer = true;
 fBook.rest_url = configXML..redirect_server_url;

Extensibility - The Facebook AS3 object is extensible. This means that you can extend your proxy on the server with new methods, and extend the Facebook object with new FacebookDelegates to handle your application-specific service calls.


What we're currently looking at improving is fully implementing the Facebook API. After that we'll be adding more helper functions to improve the usability of the api. Things such as automatically grabbing all images in an album, etc.

Enjoy!!

Facebook opens the gates! And they're off!

Well, about an hour ago, Facebook just announced their new Platform integration API. And we had an announcement ourself.

We've been having a TON of fun as a launch developer, seeing what's possible with their api. We've learned a lot of tricks along the way, specifically about integrating securely with a third party in a stateless REST environment. And all that we've learned should be released soon. We're developing an ActionScript 3 API for Platform, which we will be releasing soon.

Right now Jason is over in San Francisco taking part in a hack-a-thon with the Facebook guys. I knew I shouldn't have let him have all the fun. *sigh*

Why I like Facebook is the sort of 'extroverted internet' approach they've taken. I'm not a big MySpace fan, and a marginal extrovert myself. But I can understand what makes Facebook a great social application.

Facebook understands the concept of signal-to-noise ratio better than any existing social networking site. If you have to surf through tons of crap to find what you want, it makes it less accessible, and less valuable. Google understands this. Getting the user from point A to point B quickly is paramount to user experience. What about in the sphere of social networking? In terms of relationships, Facebook is speed dating, and MySpace is a noisy, loud night club.

Of course there is a place and time for both. Facebook has used discretion in allowing access to its users. It doesn't want to lose its integrity, and the high signal-to-noise ratio. But it has to be competitive on features, without opening the flood gates to the noobs. And so the new 'Applications' features have been developed.

Applications are Facebook's equivalent to MySpace codes. But unlike MySpace codes, which is basically just html, Facebook uses FBML to include html in its pages. Applications must also be registered with Facebook, requiring a certain level of proficiency, and removing anonymity from the application developer. That's important when you've got 27 million+ users to keep secure.

Overall I'm really happy to see a social networking platform rolled out that has this kind of smarts. We'll see where it goes from here!