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Flash, Facebook Graph API in tabs

I am by no means an expert at developing for Facebook, and to be honest neither would I want to be. What little I have done on the Facebook platform, I’ve found myself getting frustrated with the confusing, out-of-date and often half-baked documentation.

At last it seems like Facebook might be getting their acts together and the Graph API looks impressive and simple to use.

I’ve been working on a project where I had to get a users basic information within flash in a Tab and I decided to use the Graph API.

Authentication

The Graph API requires an OAuth Access token, but by default in a tab you are provided with a session key which is passed along with the rest of the Facebook variables as a flashVar. But fear not, Facebook provide a service to convert a session key into a OAuth Access Token, which in AS3 looks like this:

var variables : URLVariables = new URLVariables();
variables["type"] = "client_cred";
variables["client_id"] = __appID;
variables["client_secret"] = __secret;
variables["sessions"] = __sessionKey;

var urlRequest : URLRequest = new URLRequest(EXCHANGE_SESSIONS_URI);
urlRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.POST;
urlRequest.data = variables;

var urlLoader : URLLoader = new URLLoader();
urlLoader.load(urlRequest);

Once you’ve successfully got your OAuth Access Token you can start using the API.

Fetch data

var uri:String = REQUEST_URI + __id + (__connection.length > 0 ? "/" + __connection : "");

var variables : URLVariables = new URLVariables();
if(_accessToken) variables["access_token"] = _accessToken;

if(__filters)
{
	for (var i : String in __filters)
	{
		variables[i] = __filters[i];
	}
}

var urlRequest : URLRequest = new URLRequest(uri);
urlRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
urlRequest.data = variables;

var urlLoader : URLLoader = new URLLoader();
urlLoader.load(urlRequest);

Load picture

var uri:String = REQUEST_URI + __id + "/picture" + "?access_token=" + _accessToken +
(__size.length > 0 ? "&type=" + __size : "");

var loader:Loader = new Loader();
loader.load(new URLRequest(uri));

Search

var uri:String = REQUEST_URI + "/search";

var variables : URLVariables = new URLVariables();
if(_accessToken) variables["access_token"] = _accessToken;
variables["q"] = __q;
variables["type"] = __type;

var urlRequest : URLRequest = new URLRequest(uri);
urlRequest.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
urlRequest.data = variables;

var urlLoader : URLLoader = new URLLoader();
urlLoader.load(urlRequest);

I’ve created a utility class to make using the Facebook Graph API easier.

View project on Google code