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Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [29]

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also has the ability to automatically check an email address and pull all the new messages in as support tickets. Their hosted Software-as-a-Service version is really inexpensive, and you can have it pull in all messages sent to the support address you specify here so you can easily track the issues your users are having. It also includes a wiki and discussion forum that you can open up to your users if you need to. More details are at http://www.fogbugz.com.

Callback URL

The address on your third-party server where Facebook will find the pages that actually make up your application. For more information, see http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Your_callback_page_and_you.

Suggested Hello World value: http://www.yourdomain.com.

Canvas Page URL

Unless you have a really good reason for using an iFrame, you want to pick FBML here. You’ll have a lot more control over your app’s integration with Facebook and will have full access to things like FBML and FBJS when you’re writing your code. Plus, it’s what all the cool kids are doing. Think carefully about what you put in the URL here. It will be visible to everyone who uses the app, and it’s best not to move it around or you’ll break precious inbound links.

Suggested Hello World value: Unfortunately, you’re not going to get “helloworld,” so you might want to go with something like “jays-fantastic-demo.” (You can’t, of course, all use “jays-fantastic-demo”; only the first one of you to read this and nab it can.)

Profile Tab URL

Under the new Profile design launched in July 2008, applications can now give users the option to add a Profile tab that exclusively displays their content. If your app supports that functionality, you need to specify the URL here from which Facebook can get the FBML to display on the tab (note that it will always be a URL starting with http://apps.facebook.com/).

Suggested Hello World value: We’re not actually going to add support for a tab here, but if we were, the URL might be something like http://apps.facebook.com/jays-fantastic-demo/profile-tab.php.

Profile Tab Name

If you’re providing a Profile tab URL, you need to also provide a name for your tab that will appear on the Profile tab itself. Facebook will use roughly the first 15 characters of the name on the tab.

Suggested Hello World value: Leave it blank, since we’re not using it.

Application Type

This will be “website” for almost all of you, unless you’re planning to build a desktop app that lives outside of Facebook and communicates with it via the API (e.g., photo uploaders, Outlook synchronization). Note that your selection here will change the other fields in the form.

Suggested Hello World value: website.

Mobile Integration

At the time this book was written, the mobile integration side of Facebook Platform hadn’t taken off nearly as strongly as the website side. Some very powerful tools are available to you as an app developer, and it’s always a good idea to consider ways to expand your user base, so think about adding in mobile support for your app. You can always check this option later if it’s not part of your version-one plans. For more information about Facebook Platform for mobile, see http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Mobile.

Suggested Hello World value: Leave this unchecked for Hello World.

IP Addresses

This is an optional security measure that can help prevent fraud in your app. If you’re building something like a contest site and you want to make sure that the only servers that can communicate with Facebook belong to you, add in their IP addresses and Facebook’s mighty firewall will block everyone else. This is probably overkill for most apps and can be a pain if you move servers and forget to update this, so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you need it.

Suggested Hello World value: You can leave it empty for Hello World, but you should put the IP address of your http://yourdomain.com server in here for other apps.

IP Blocking Exceptions

If you’re using the IP Addresses server to constrain your app to only accept

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