Hello Facebook in Rails

Posted on August 17th, 2007 by Alex Gorbatchev. In Rails, Web Development.

I’ve signed up for Facebook today to check out how the whole application development works. Setting up a development server at home which is accessible from Facebook is pretty straight forward.

Here’s what you need:

Facebook account
Local box with Apache
Domain name pointing to your home IP. I use No-Ip.

Here are the steps I took.

Setting up development application on Facebook. Follow the guide, it’s pretty straight forward.
Set up No-Ip to point *.dev.mydomain.com to my local box. This allows me to create as many Rails applications as I need to.

Configured Apache to forward all calls to fbtest.dev.mydomain.com to localhost:3000 using mod_proxy like so:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName fbtest.dev.mydomain.com
  ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:3000/
</VirtualHost>

gem install rfacebook
cd /anywhere/fbtest
rails .
ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/rfacebook/plugins/rfacebook_on_rails
rake facebook:setup
Go to http://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php
Copy and paste API key and secret to config/facebook.yml. Set canvas_path to the local path on Facebook, ie /myfacebookapp/ and callback_path to local path on your server, ie /facebook/.
ruby script/generate controller facebook index

Edit index method in Facebook controller, like so:

class FacebookController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @result = fbsession.friends_get.uid_list
  end
end

Edit index.rhtml like so:

<% @result.each do |uid| %>
  <fb:name uid="<%= uid %>" />
<% end %>

Start Apache
ruby script/server
Now you should be able to hit your Facebook application page at http://apps.facebook.com/myfacebookapp

You should see a list of your friends. Took me about 30 minutes to figure all this out.

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12 comments.

Matt P

August 23rd, 4:38 pm #

Thanks for the clean, simple tutorial Alex. I’d like to also note the main documentation is also on the RFacebook homepage:

http://rfacebook.rubyforge.org
Chris Saylor

August 27th, 8:37 pm #

Don’t forget to add this to your controller to actually request login.

before_filter :require_facebook_login
matt

September 4th, 6:42 pm #

can be more details, many of the steps are left out.
is the app fbml or iframe ?
Bhushan

November 2nd, 3:25 am #

Hey Do you know any ways to put google maps in Facebook application I have done it with iframe but with this I dont have access to map object outside the frame .

Please send me the reply I you have any solution.
Alex Gorbatchev

November 2nd, 9:44 am #

@Bhurshan,

I don’t think you have many options for GMaps. Facebook sandboxes all JS, so you can’t include it straight. If you need to have maps, the only two options i can think of are flash and iframe. You can use flash with Yahoo Maps.
Rainer

November 7th, 3:46 am #

Hello Alex,

thanks for the tutorial!

One thing I would like to know, though: Does Facebook provide any kind of hosting service for their members, or are we required to host our rails applications for facebook on our own webspace?

Kind regards,

Rainer
Alex G

November 7th, 6:36 am #

@ Rainer,

facebook is byoh - bring your own hosting.
Chandoo..

November 7th, 9:34 pm #

Hey all,

Had you done some functionality with the google maps in the FB app. I am using it in my app but not be able to access the object of the map, i am using it in an iframe. Could you suggest me some thing.
Oleg

February 19th, 9:55 pm #

The names of my friends are getting displayed by using this code:

” />

If I do following

it will display uids of all my friends.

Any idea if I am missing anything?

SameShirtEveryDay.com

Hello Facebook in Rails

12 comments.

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