Developing a Facebook Application for absolute beginners – step 5

Welcome to the 5th step.

Let’s make a small recap:

Step 1: Creation of the application itself

Step 2: Publishing a text on the user’s status

Step 3: Publishing text, links and images on the user’s wall

Step 4: Inviting friends to use the application

Now it’s time to make the application post a notification to users you invite to join the app.

I mean this one:

invite

The script now is this one:

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<?php
 
require_once 'facebook.php';
 
$appapikey = 'xxxxx';
$appsecret = 'xxxxx';
 
$facebook = new Facebook($appapikey, $appsecret);
 
$user_id = $facebook->require_login();
 
$friends = $facebook->api_client->friends_get();
 
echo "<p>Hello <fb:name uid=\"$user_id\" useyou=\"false\" linked=\"false\" firstnameonly=\"true\"></fb:name>, you have ".count($friends)." friends";
 
foreach($friends as $friend){
     $infos.=$friend.",";
}
 
$infos = substr($infos,0,strlen($infos)-1);
 
$gender=$facebook->api_client->users_getInfo($infos,'sex');
 
$gender_array = array(); 
 
foreach($gender as $gendervalue){
     $gender_array[$gendervalue[sex]]++;
}
 
$male = round($gender_array[male]*100/($gender_array[male]+$gender_array[female]),2);
$female = 100-$male;
 
echo "<ul><li>Males: $male%</li><li>Females: $female%</li></ul>";
 
$message = "has ".count($friends)." friends. $male% of them are male. $female% are female";
 
$image = array();
$image[type]="image";
$image[src]="http://www.gamemummy.com/facebook/genderz_demo/genderz.png";
$image[href]="http://apps.facebook.com/genderz_demo/";
 
$attachment = array();
$attachment[name] =  "Try the application!!";
$attachment[href] = "http://apps.facebook.com/genderz_demo/";
$attachment[caption] = "{*actor*} has ".count($friends)." friends";
$attachment[description] = "powered by genderz_demo";
$attachment[media] = array($image);
 
$has_permission = $facebook->api_client->users_hasAppPermission("publish_stream");
 
if(!$has_permission){
     echo "<br /><fb:prompt-permission perms=\"publish_stream\">Publish results on your wall!!</fb:prompt-permission>";
}
else{
     $facebook->api_client->stream_publish($message,$attachment);
}
 
if(isset($_POST[ids])){
     $message = "is inviting you to use <a href = \"http://apps.facebook.com/genderz_demo/\">genderz_demo</a>!! Try it!";
     $ids_list = implode(",",$_POST[ids]);
     $facebook->api_client->notifications_send($ids_list,$message,'user_to_user');
     echo "<br /><br />Thank you for inviting ".count($_POST[ids])." friends to genderz_demo";
}
else {
 
?>
 
<fb:request-form
     action="http://apps.facebook.com/genderz_demo/"
     method="POST" 
     type="genderz_demo" 
     content="Hello. Please use my app. <?php echo htmlentities("<fb:req-choice url=\"http://apps.facebook.com/genderz_demo/\" label=\"Try it!!\"") ?>" >
     <fb:multi-friend-selector showborder="false" actiontext="Send some spam invites to Genderz Demo!"> 
</fb:request-form>
 
<?php } ?>

Lines 68-74 are the same we added at Step 4, but they are in an else condition because they will appear only if I don’t have a variable called ids passed with POST (line 58).

This means I show the invite friends selector only if I haven’t already invited some friends, because when I submit an invitation form, an ids variable is passed with an array containing all of the user IDs of the people I invited.

Now let’s see what happens at lines 59-62, executed only once I submitted the request form.

Line 59: writing my note. Notice as my note stats with “is inviting” and not with “Emanuele Feronato is inviting”, because when I specify user_to_user in the note mode at line 61, the API will add my name by itself.

Line 60: transforming an array into a comma separated value string of all of the user IDs of the people I invited.

Line 61: notifications_send takes as input the list created at line 60, the message created at line 59 and sends the note as user_to_user as explained before.

Finally, line 62 thanks the user for sending some spam :)

And the application is finished… during next step I’ll show you how to finetune it in order to make it seem a professional application, then we’ll see the hardest part: monetization.

Try the application

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13 Responses

  1. lordkryss says:
    October 9, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    Hai lasciato l’api key e l’app key che negli altri tutorial hai tolto, dimenticanza?

    Reply
  2. Emanuele Feronato says:
    October 9, 2009 at 6:16 pm

    ups… :)

    Reply
  3. Ruslan says:
    October 10, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    Can we make AS3 applications using Facebook API ?

    Reply
  4. davide says:
    October 16, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    ma dobbiamo lasciare l’app key e l’api key oppure dobbiamo toglierle? perchè se le lascio mi funziona tutto se le tolgo non parte più l’applicazione!
    info please.
    inoltre, come faccio a inserire un’applicazione flash in index.php? grazie

    Reply
  5. thomas says:
    October 19, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    Hey,

    Great stuff.

    I can’t get this to work using the iframe. I’m closing all my tags with and have the Scripts linked like it suggests but my permissions aren’t connecting and the boxes (like share) pop up empty. I would like to use the iframe so I can use JQuery instead of class JavaScript/AJAX. This also makes form actions much easier with database connection etc.

    Any suggestions? I can post code if necessary…

    Reply
  6. Mehedi Hasan says:
    October 21, 2009 at 6:32 am

    its really helpful for me … thanks

    Reply
  7. Jack says:
    November 4, 2009 at 3:29 pm

    how can i prompt the Form Dialog before I published in his wall ?

    Reply
  8. Facebook Applications Developer says:
    November 6, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    This article will be a good start for biggners.

    Reply
  9. Mohsin says:
    November 14, 2009 at 2:04 pm

    Hey Emanuele !!!

    You simply rock!!!This article was so helpful and so simple and easy to understand that even a novice like me was able to understand and follow it. Anxiously waiting for the “finetuning to give a professional look” and “monetizing” articles.
    Thanks :)

    Reply
  10. Colin says:
    March 12, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    Thanks for a great tutorial.

    I have a question regarding updates of the wall. When the index.php is updated with a new message, how can the app refresh/update the wall without having the user visiting the canvas page again?

    All permissions have been enabled.

    Thx

    Reply
  11. David says:
    April 7, 2010 at 4:40 pm

    Looks like this code throws an exception error now.. must be a change to Facebook.. throws it in the code, and in your demo.

    Reply
  12. Bethy says:
    April 14, 2010 at 11:45 am

    Very detailed description, a beginner in FA development will make an easy start!

    Reply
  13. Chris says:
    April 20, 2010 at 11:40 am

    Yes, since March 1st notifications_send is no more available:
    http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Notifications.send

    Reply

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