Facebook Cookbook

The promise of Facebook is simple: a unified social network, with a brilliantly developed application platform, which counts almost everyone you know as a member. The Facebook Platform offers developers an opportunity to build applications, which leverage a well- developed toolkit with the potential to reach tens of millions of users around the world. The missing element for a lot of Platform novices is the strategy involved in designing successful applications, the need to architect for very sudden scaling challenges, and the ability to design with the costs of hosting and deployment in mind. This book will solve both problems by providing easy to follow recipes that will help developers to strategize and design their application, determine the ideal Facebook integration points to leverage, architect and build their application, and market it in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Jay Goldman has been providing a human side to technology for over ten years, as both a User Experience Specialist and Visual Designer. His career has been focused on the interaction between people and technology, and his insights have helped to greatly improve products on mobile, web, and desktop platforms, including IBM DB2 and Mozilla Firefox. Jay led Radiant Core's Professional Services Team on a wide variety of award winning engagements across many industries, and is now helping tech startups to change the world as a consultant on products, technology, and design. He has been instrumental in the continued growth of the BarCamp community in Toronto and was one of the co-conductors of the very successful TransitCamp event held in partnership with the Toronto Transit Commission. Jay is the host of Mr. Mobile, a weekly web video from Butterscotch.com covering the latest in mobile technology; you can check them out at http://butterscotch.com/mrmobile. Jay has been published in the Harvard Business Review and is the author of Facebook Cookbook for O'Reilly Media.

Dedication
Contributors
Preface
Who Should Read This Book
WhatâÇÖs in This Book?
Code Samples
Keeping Up with the Facebookers
Using Code Examples
SafariÂ“ Books Online
Comments and Questions
Thanks!
Apologies to Eli
Introducing Facebook Platform
What Exactly Is Facebook Platform?
Skills to Pay the Bills
Facebook Platform Off-Facebook
Facebook Platform Versus Google OpenSocial
Saddle Up!
Ideation and Strategy
Which Types of Apps Are the Most Popular?
Which Apps Are Most Popular?
Test-Driving Ideas with Facebook Polls
The Winning Formula for Facebook
WhereâÇÖs the Money?
Google AdSense and Facebook
Funding Facebook Development
Facebook Platform Integration Points
Application Directory
Navigating the Applications Menu
Facebook Canvas Pages
Think Outside the Profile Box
Info Sections
News Feed and Mini-Feed
Noteworthy Notifications
Understanding Allocations
Attachments and the Publisher
Requests
Tabs
Guiding Principles of App Strategy
Community Gardening
Finding Inspiration
Hello World
Installing the Facebook Developer App
Setting Up a New App
Hello World
Installing Your App: ItâÇÖs All About the About Page
Architecture and Design
Under the Hood: How Facebook Apps Work
Architecting for the Future: Open Web Apps
Build Now, Scale Later: Getting Real
Scalability
Language Selection As Architecture
Cross-Language Development with Facebook Thrift
The Database Is Dead! Long Live memcached!
Advanced Caching with Nginx and memcached
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Hosting with Amazon Web Services
Integrating Drupal and Facebook
App Design Process
The Facebook User Interface Widgets
FacebookâÇÖs Global User Interface
Setting Up Your Environment
Creating a Test Account
Facebook Clients
JavaScript Client Library
Starting Out in PHP
Demo Applications
Developer Documentation
Test Consoles
Developer Forums: Help!
Facebook Bug Squashing
Facebook Developer Software Toolbox
Weekly Facebook Pushes
Hosting
Amazonian Backends: Simple Storage Solution
Amazonian Backends: Hosting on Elastic Cloud Computing
Staying Up-to
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Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials