Facebook Cookbook - Jay Goldman [53]
E Text Editor
If you’re a fan of TextMate on Mac OS X, this is the editor for you (its slogan is, in fact, “The power of TextMate on Windows”). Full support for TextMate commands, snippets, and bundles makes this an excellent choice if you spend time between platforms, and it is a really solid editor in its own right. Get more info at http://www.e-texteditor.com/. The cost is $34.95 for an individual, with no obvious educational licensing.
Notepad++
Notepad++ is an open source and entirely free replacement for Windows’ built-in Notepad editor. This is a relatively mature editor with many of the high-end features you’ll find elsewhere, including tabbed windows, syntax coloring, regexp, macros, and so on. More info at http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm.
Helios Software Solutions TextPad
This fairly popular editor was designed to follow the Windows XP user interface guidelines, so you should feel right at home if that’s your operating system of choice. More info at http://www.textpad.com/products/textpad/. The cost is $33 for an individual, with educational discounts available on request.
Linux
If you’re running Linux as your primary operating system, you certainly don’t need my advice on text editors (and I’m certainly not about to step into the vi/Emacs war without at least a Pico or NEdit to shield myself with).
Eclipse
If you’re into the idea of an open source, cross-platform editor, particularly one that is extendible through a veritable mountain of third-party plugins, check out Eclipse at http://www.eclipse.org/.
Weekly Facebook Pushes
Problem
How will I know when Facebook is going to push new code to its production servers? What if it breaks my app?!
Solution
Facebook generally does one weekly push of new code to their production servers, which is currently scheduled for Tuesdays. The details of the push (which is, essentially, the list of check-ins to Facebook’s source control server) are available from the Wiki’s Push Changes page at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Category:Push_Changes.
Discussion
If you’re actively working on a new app or maintaining an existing one, you should make sure to test it on Wednesdays to see whether the push has broken anything for you. But don’t fixate on that day of the week, as Facebook sometimes moves the actual push day to Monday. You can see when the push is scheduled by keeping up with the Platform Status Feed from the Developer app, which you can find at http://www.facebook.com/developers/message.php?id=233, or you can subscribe to it by RSS/Atom at http://www.facebook.com/feeds/api_messages.php.
As of mid-May 2008, Facebook has started pushing its release candidates to http://www.beta.facebook.com on the Monday prior to the Tuesday push to production, so that developers can test and report bugs. You should definitely take advantage of that testing window, so schedule some blocked-off time on Monday nights to make sure your babies haven’t broken.
Hosting
Problem
I need to find reliable and scalable hosting for my Facebook applications.
Solution
Hosting a Facebook app doesn’t have any real requirements, other than the ability to rapidly scale up if your app becomes popular.
NOTE
Unclear on why you would need your own hosting since your app is on Facebook? Check out Chapter 4 for more information on the way Facebook apps work.
Facebook has negotiated with Joyent and Amazon Web Services to offer programs tailored to Platform developers. You can, of course, host your app anywhere you’d like, but make sure that your hosting provider doesn’t have a really expensive ramp up if you exceed your plan. Your app could become the hottest thing on Facebook overnight, which would be awesome, but then you could get a bill from your provider for $100,000 in overages, which would suck (to say the least).
NOTE
If you’re happy with your existing hosting and have already checked to make sure you’re OK to become #1 with a bullet, you can safely skip the following