Facebook® Application Development For Dummies®

Facebook's API Test Console

Available at http://developers.facebook.com/tools/console, the API Test Console can tell you your login status and allow you to place basic API calls and HTML/FBML that you can test. Any error produced is then generated in an error console in a convenient location that you can watch as you test.

Your API Test Console consists of the following components (see Figure 14-1):

• Login/Authorization: This area consists of three buttons — a normal Facebook Login button, a Disconnect button, and a Logout button. The Facebook Login button is used to log in to Facebook and authorize your application for use in your testing. The Disconnect button disconnects your application from being authorized on Facebook but keeps you logged in to Facebook while you're testing your application. The Logout button completely logs you out of Facebook and disconnects your application for the user. These three connect phases are important to consider as you develop your application.
• Login/Authorization status: This is the current status of your logged-in user. If you aren't logged in or disconnected, it will say notConnected. If you're logged in, it will say Connected.
• Text area: This is where you enter your API test calls. They can either be FBML tags or JavaScript calls to the Facebook JavaScript SDK within HTML <script/> tags.
• Run button: Clicking this button runs the application that is in the text area box.
• Examples: This little button provides you with several examples of how ...