Facebook Cookbook

Facebook Clients

Problem

I have a good grasp on my idea and how to build it, but I need to find the right Facebook client for my development environment before I can get started.

Solution

Most of the resources you’re going to need to get started can be found on the Facebook Developers site at http://developers.facebook.com.

Discussion

Facebook officially supports Client Libraries for PHP 4 and PHP 5, which you can find at http://developers.facebook.com/resources.php. Facebook has also recently launched a JavaScript Client Library (which was still in beta at the time this was written), which you can find at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/JavaScript_Client_Library. There used to be an officially supported Java library, but it’s been discontinued (presumably due to a lack of interest).

If you’re intent on using a different language and don’t mind that its Client Libraries might not be up-to-date, you’ll find a full list on the main page of the Wiki at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Main_Page (including ASP.NET, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, etc.).

The PHP Client is currently missing four methods that are available through the API: Photos.createAlbum(), Photos.upload(), photos.addTag(), and Users.hasAppPermission() (see Adding Missing PHP Client Library Methods). You can use a third-party extension to get around the fifth method (see Uploading a Photo).