CMPT 412: Social Computing and Participative Web (Web 2.

0)

Assignment 1 Creating a simple Facebook application

In this assignment, you will create a simple mashup application using facebook APIs.

Facebook has REST APIs, which means that you can invoke its APIs with any
programming languages or web technique you want, as long as they can send HTTP
requests and receive XML or JSON messages. There are various facebook APIs client
libraries based on different programming languages to facilitate the mashup
process, such as authentication and serialization. Here is a list of clients’ libraries:
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Client_Libraries .

There are three “official” libraries which are maintained and supported by facebook:
they are in JavaScript, PHP 5, and ActionScript 3.0. For this assignment, it is highly
recommended to use these libraries, because they have a relatively better
documentation, larger user community, and more online examples and tutorials
compared toother community-driven libraries.

There is an alternative way to develop social mashups. Websites like zembly provide
an integrated development environment for creating social applications.

There are four types of facebook applications a developer can create.

1. iFrame or FBML facebook application

2. Facebook connect application
3. Facebook desktop application
4. Facebook mobile application

You can create any kind of application for this assignment.

Resources:

The architectures of these applications are illustrated at the following website:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook/#architecture.

The facebook developer site provides a good introduction about how to create a
“hello world” facebook application (an article and video ):
http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php?tab=tutorial The language used in
the tutorials is actionscript (the programming language of Flex), but the general
concepts are independent of the language.

The main steps of creating a facebook application are explained here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook/articles/build_your_first_facebook_app_01.h
tml

Creating a “HelloWorld” facebook application using Flex is presented in a video

here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/facebook/articles/video_facebook_quick_start.html

Grading:

Minimum Requirements for the assignment

1. Handle user authentication and access session information (such as session

key) (30%)
2. Display logged user’s name and avatar. (20%)
3. Display logged user’ friends information such as name, avatar, or date of
birth. (20%)

Advanced requirements (you can pick any or several, if your total mark exceeds
100%, it will be considered a bonus towards the next assignment).

1. Using the latest stream API (30%)

2. Using FQL( Facebook Query Language) (15%)
3. Using photo or video related APis (30%)
4. Facebook connect application (10%)
5. Facebook mobile application (30%)

The maximum score is 100%

Suggestion:

You should setup the developing environment first, choose the language and library
you are comfortable with. If you want to implement an iFrame, FBML, or facebook
connect application, you need a server and the IP address or domain name of the
server. If you are not familiar how to set a web server up, the IDE netbeans
http://www.netbeans.org/ is highly recommend. It supports Java, PHP, Ruby, JRuby,
Groovy as developing languages. Netbeans comes with the Apache Tomat, GlassFish
server.

If you create a mobile or desktop facebookapplication, you don’t need a server.

zembly can host your facebook application written in JavaScript, so in that case you
don’t need a server either.