Learning Facebook Application Development: A step-by-step tutorial for creating custom Facebook applications using the Facebook platform and PHP - Softcover

Bain, Mark Alexander; Hayder, Hasin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847193692 ISBN 13: 9781847193698

Publisher: Packt Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

In Detail

Using Facebook Applications, developers can add custom features to one of the most popular websites in the world. Facebook is the biggest social network among college students, and is gaining ground among professionals too. Facebook applications enable you to add new ways for users to interact with each other using Facebook.

Facebook applications are written in a server-side language, and hosted on the application developer's own server. They interface with Facebook, so that they appear to users to be part of Facebook itself.

This book shows PHP developers how to quickly get started building powerful Facebook applications, how to work with data stored in Facebook, including photos, and how to handle multimedia and other custom data within Facebook applications.

The book covers how to send notifications and invitations from within an application, update a user's profile, create application control panels for users, and much more.

What you will learn from this book?

• Learn Facebook application development through step-by-step examples.
• Build data-driven Facebook applications, work with friends lists, photo galleries, multimedia, and more.
• Work with Facebook's security model to produce applications that are safe and functional.
• Communicate with users through newsfeeds, notifications, invitations, and messages.
• Learn the Facebook PHP API, and the various markup languages you'll need to build Facebook applications: Mock Ajax, FBML, FBJS (a variant of JavaScript especially for Facebook), and FQL.

Approach

This book builds on your knowledge as a PHP developer to provide a fast-paced, step-by-step tutorial in building Facebook applications. The book is packed with example code and demo applications, so that you can see techniques in action. Along the way we provide quick references to the most important aspects of the API, so you can refer back as you develop your own applications with the book.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for PHP5 developers who want to create custom Facebook applications. It assumes no knowledge of the Facebook API or Platform, but does assume that you are a Facebook user.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Mark Alexander Bain

Dr. Mark Alexander Bain first started customizing CRM systems back in the mid '90s when he was team leader for Vodafone's Cascade project - the team took the 'out-of-the-box' Clarify CRM and turned it into a radio base station planning application, complete with a workflow engine for passing jobs between the different departments involved in the planning, building, and implementation of a radio network. Since then he's lectured at the University of Central Lancashire, and currently Mark writes articles on all things Linux and Open Source for Linux Format, Newsforge.com and Linux Journal. SugarCRM customization, therefore, seems the obvious choice for this, his second book, since it combines Mark's knowledge of working with commercial CRMs and the Open Source philosophy. Mark works from his home on the edge of the Lake District in the UK, where he lives with his wife, two dogs and two cats, and gets the odd visit from his sons - Michael and Simon.

Hasin Hayder

Hasin Hayder graduated in Civil Engineering from the Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET) in Bangladesh. He is a Zend-certified Engineer and expert in developing localized applications. He is currently working as a Technical Director in Trippert Labs and managing the local branch in Bangladesh. Beside his full time job, Hasin writes his blog at hasin.wordpress.com, writes article in different websites and maintains his open source framework Orchid at orchid.phpxperts.net Hasin lives in Bangladesh with his wife Ayesha and his son, Afif.

Edition details

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847193692
• ISBN 13: 9781847193698
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244