New Fun Inside of Facebook’s C# SDK

Two weeks ago Facebook released their own C# SDK for developers to use. I downloaded it right off the bat but noticed that it had a few holes in it but did give a clean way to call their new Graph API.

One of the most glaring issues was that it can’t authenticate fully. I looked all over Google for it and finally found out that it’s an issue with the cookie that Facebook itself writes. The first key in the cookie is access_token and that passes the token from Facebook that allows you to make calls on behalf of the logged in user. Well the cookie’s value itself is one big string wrapped inside of quotation marks so the key is “access_token rather than access_token. This caused some hairpulling on my part but now that it is coded for it, it is working like a charm.

So the code should read like this if you’re using C#:

GetFacebookCookieValue("\"access_token")

Hope that helps anyone who ran into that as I did.

Things to do with Facebook

So it’s been a while since I wrote but it’s partially because of stuff I’ve been doing with Facebook. That and I’m lazy. I’ve worked on teams that have released 3 applications and in the process of finishing 1 at work right now. Along with those, I’ve personally released 1 and have 2 that I have in the works. So lots of apps in my head right now.

The first app we did is called Finders Keepers. It is a really cool wishlist site where you can keep products on your Wishlist, send your friends items for their Wishlists or buy products. It was my first adventure into a real, fully functional, Facebook application. It was tough but it all came together thanks to a great team and I am proud to say that I worked on it. It is going through some major revisions so keep an eye out for those in the upcoming weeks.

The second app we did was for the Pontiac Game Changing Performance. We worked with ESPN for the College Football season and just last week released the new version for College Basketball just in time for March Madness. We implemented a really nice recruiting component for it that I think helps out with the social aspect that all applications strive to find.

The third application is one that hasn’t been fully released yet but I used the new Facebook JavaScript Client Library. Using this allows you to write applications that do not need to live within the Facebook site. Now any site that can use JavaScript can use it. Really nice and once more documentation shows up, it will get only better.

Personally, I released an RSS reader application last October while I was trying to learn just how the API worked. You can find it here. Simply put, the user adds the feed that they want, how many items, and there it is. Still has some issues with it I am finding but not too bad for a first time app I think. Add it and let me know what you think.

So pretty much since October, I have been working on Facebook apps. I’ve done some in ASP.NET C# and a couple in PHP. I gotta say that each has its pros but being a .NET guy, I had a bit of an easier time with those. But that’s the beauty with the Facebook apps. It doesn’t matter what your comfort level is. You can do it in any language it seems. Facebook releases theirs in PHP and Java but there are many APIs written in whatever language you want. At Terralever, we wrote our own API for the .NET framework and I find it really easy to work with.

So if you’re wanting to get into writing your own Facebook app, it’s really easy to get started. There is a lot of people out there to help now. So do what I did and build a dinky little app and go from there.

UPDATE – 2 Streamy Invites Available

As an update to my post a couple of days ago; I have 2 Streamy invites to give away. Here are the rules:

Tell me in 50 words or less why I should give “You” an invite and not anyone else who is requesting. So to enter, enter a comment to this story (or the original) and tell me why you deserve the Streamy invite over the others. I look forward to getting some creative answers.

Failed Debugging with IIS7

Yesterday I ran into an issue when I was debugging a web application that I was building. It was debugging but as soon as I installed the “Not So” RAD Controls on my machine and restarted Visual Studio, I was lucky enough to receive this error every time I wanted to debug and step through my application:

Debugging Failed Because Integrated Windows Authentication Is Not Enabled iis 7

I wasn’t sure if it was the “Not So” RAD Controls or something else. So I went to Google and did a search for my error and came across this page. Very helpful as apparently at that time, my computer realized that I needed that patch. Weird but it worked so if you run across this, get the hotfix from Microsoft.

Online Digg Top Whatever Lists

So today I’m looking at Digg and I see an article for 100 Essential Resources for Web Developers and I check it out because I am a web developer and these things interest me. I click the link and see quite a few links for cool resources. One thing glares out at me and that there are barely (I think I counted 3 or 4) .NET references on there. Being a .NET guy made me wonder why. I am a big fan of Digg and all that it does for the online community but it seems that this Web 2.0 is going in a direction away from .NET and towards more open source languages like PHP or Ruby on Rails. Those are fine languages (I’ve even worked a lot in PHP) but so is .NET.

So this made me think, why not make my own list? There are a lot of places that I look for resources so why not share? So here they are in no particular order:

• MSDN
• 4 Guys From Rolla
• ASP.NET
• Code Project – I always end up here with the help of Google
• ScottGu’s Blog
• GoDotNet
• EggHeadCafe
• DevGuru – Not so much for .NET but I end up using it a lot

It’s not very impressive but these sites can do for me what 25 PHP sites will do for the normal PHP guy. If you have one that I didn’t include, send it to me. I didn’t include it because I don’t know about it.