Drupal for Facebook

They don't give a lot of details, unclear whether there's a bug, or just liberal privacy settings by default:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7376738.stm

Here's advance warning about some changes that are on the way. Anyone using Drupal for Facebook will need to manually alter settings when these changes take effect.

What you need to be aware of is that all callback URLs will change. Right now, if your site is, say, www.drupalforfacebook.org, then the callback URL (as specified in the app settings form on apps.facebook.com/developer) is http://www.drupalforfacebook.org/. This will change to http://www.drupalforfacebook.org/fb_cb/NNN/, where NNN is the id used by Drupal to identify the app. I'll document this in the README and elsewhere when the change gets checked in.

Drupal for Facebook still needs work when it comes to authmapping existing (drupal) accounts and facebook user ids. I've made some progress and it would be nice to have some extra eyeballs taking a look at it before check-in.

If you have time to test this patch, please do!

I plan to give a talk about Drupal for Facebook at the upcoming Drupal Convention in Boston. If you're there, I hope you'll attend. The presentation is aimed at those familiar with Drupal but unsure what Facebook integration means, and also experienced Drupal wanting to understand how Drupal for Facebook works.

Many more details are available here: http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/session/drupal-facebook

Here's another poll question for the DFF community...

If you're using Drupal for Facebook you're aware that it will create a Drupal account when facebook users use your app. You're also aware that it uses the facebook name for the drupal account name.

Trouble is, Drupal account's need to be uniquely named, while facebook accounts do not. Also, your drupal install may already have a user with the same name as a facebook user.

At the recent Bay Area Drupal Camp, I presented Drupal for Facebook. I built a small Facebook Application and walked through how I used Drupal to create it. Now the details of this presentation are available in two screencasts.

Read more: http://www.dave-cohen.com/node/2246

Or jump right to the videos:

http://blip.tv/file/492102
http://blip.tv/file/492126

(if the video doesnt play, select an alternate format on the bottom of the page.)

At the moment Drupal for Facebook runs on either PHP4 or PHP5. I'd like to take an informal poll: do you care about PHP4 support?

A little background: Facebook provides two PHP APIs. One for PHP4 and one for PHP5. Drupal for Facebook can detect which is running, and include the appropriate API. But if the API for PHP5 is included, it throws exceptions, which must be caught by Drupal for Facebook. In order to catch the exceptions, our code must become PHP5 only. Therefore we must drop PHP4 support entirely if we are to use Facebook's PHP5 client API.

For those who missed my presentation at DrupalCon, a video of the talk is available, thanks to Mark B.

And, the slides are available, too.

Until now, Drupal for Facebook has been primarily concerned with serving up canvas pages. That is, taking content, blocks, menus and other elements rendered by Drupal, and displaying them on Facebook. The other half of the integration, getting information from Facebook and displaying it on a Drupal-powered site, has been largely ignored.

Drupal for Facebook now has an official home on Drupal.org:
http://drupal.org/project/fb

Do read the README.txt as it contains important instructions. Installing Drupal for Facebook is not as simple as most module installs.

Please submit issues (with patches!) to the issue queue.