Facebook App
Development 101
Intro to the Platform/Building your first
Facebook App
Professor R. Tyler Ballance
Slide, Inc.
tyler@slide.com

Meet the Professor
I work at Slide, Inc.

Meet the Professor
I write Facebook apps.

Meet Ari
Works on the platform

Facebook App Dev 101
Introduction to the Facebook Platform
Facebook Developer Resources
Platform Client Libraries
Dissecting “Why are you awesome?”
LUNCH!
Building an application
Testing your application
Metrics?

Introduction to
the Platform

Welcome to the
Facebook Platform

Welcome to the
Facebook Platform
Dave McClure is attending Graphing Social
Tony Hsieh left the group Tony Hsieh For President
David Young added a new video to a group.
Adora Cheung added FunWall
Kara Swisher and Mark Zuckerberg ended their relationship.
Lee Lorenzen plans to attend Widget Summit
Kevin Ho is feeling graphical.
Adora and Daniel Kim are now friends.
Mike Huang updated his profile. He edited
his interests and profile picture. Max Levchin updated his Top Friends
Will Liu is no longer listed as single.
Jared Fleiser has thrown a sheep at Sonya Chawla
Kasey Kirkham added new photos.
Nik Gandhy wrote on Lennisse Ambriz’s w
Keith Rabois attended CommunityNext Platform
A black blue box of social information

Developer
Resources

Developer Resources
Test Console
http://developers.facebook.com/tools.php
Bugzilla
http://bugs.developers.facebook.com/
Developer Application
http://www.facebook.com/developers/
Developer Wiki
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com

Subscribe to Platform
Feeds

Report good bugs

IRC Channel

Technically
Speaking

<fb:hello/>
How do you communicate
with Facebook?
XML
JSON
HTTP Request

Is Zuckerberg my friend?
XML Response
<xml>NO</xml>
<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
<friends_areFriends_response xmlns=\"http://api.facebook.com/1.0/\"
xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xsi:schemaLocation=\"http://
api.facebook.com/1.0/ http://api.facebook.com/1.0/facebook.xsd\" list=\"true\">
<friend_info>
<uid1>627205543</uid1>
412 bytes
<uid2>4</uid2>
<are_friends>0</are_friends>
</friend_info>
</friends_areFriends_response>
{‘um’: ‘NO!’}
JSON Response 53 bytes
[{\"uid1\":\"627205543\",\"uid2\":\"4\",\"are_friends\":false}]

Friends’ UIDs
697 friends
JSON XML
16KB 44KB
SELECT uid1 FROM friend WHERE uid2 = 627205543

Facebook Client
Libraries

PHP
Cons Pros
Super-easy to use.
Only works with XML (like BASIC, but with dollar signs)
Written in PHP Officially supported
Conducive to Wider variety of
spaghetti code hosting options

Python
Cons Pros
Shared hosts don’t tend
Very well written API
to support Python
Uses simplejson by Supports JSON/XML
default by default
Easily integrated
Slightly larger learning
with Django
curve for beginners
Good enough for Slide

Ruby
Cons Pros
Difficult to move from
Scales well
PHP to Ruby
Bends the rules on how Ruby on Rails can be
to write RESTful code very clean
Easy to write poorly Rails encourages
performing code automated testing.
Not quite conforming to Very Web 2.0
Ruby “coding standards”

.NET
Cons Pros
A variety of existing
IIS, or mod_mono
UserControls
Some aspects Usable from C#, or
require .NET 3.5 VB.NET
Very “enterprisey” and Tight integration
complicated with Visual Studio
LINQ support
Tied to XML with
a noose
Very well documented

Other Libraries
ColdFusion
Perl
Java
C++

More Cons
Platform moves too quickly
Marketplace API
Status API
Data Store API
Very little “shared coding standards”
Everybody’s reinventing the wheel

Dissecting
“Why are you awesome?”

What it is yo.
Owl == AWESOME

Post-Install
Owl
Call to action
Social context

Post-Install
fb:dashboard
fb:action
fb:profile-pic
regular form
fb:name
regular links

Changin’ State
fb:success

Notify. Rinse. Repeat.
fb:notif-page

IN UR PROFILEZ
fb:pronoun
auto-generated
OMFG LAME

IN UR PROFILEZ
fb:name
fb:profile-pic Mock AJAX’d

IN UR PROFILEZ
fb:error

Zee Codes

Building your
first application

Testing your
Facebook application

Use basic unit testing
Application
Logic
phpunit

Metrics, engagement
and fun numbers

Closure