WebProNews

Tag: Graph API

  • Facebook Adds Features To Graph API Explorer

    Facebook Adds Features To Graph API Explorer

    Facebook says one of its most popular developer tools is the Graph API Explorer, which lets them authenticate, make API requests and debug. The company has been actively seeking feedback on the tool to come up with improvements, and on Tuesday it announced some new features.

    The new features are aimed at improving the experience for code generation, history/favorites, and the interface.

    For code generation, developers can now click “Get Code,” to copy-paste a request in Android SDK, iOS SDK, Javascript SDK, PHP SDK, or cURL (as pictured above).

    On the favorites/history front, developers can now interact and replay requests in the Graph API Explorer with both methods. By using history, you can retrieve recent method calls from your app admin and developer devices to be able to replay them directly in the tool.

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    With favorites, you can bookmark important or frequently used requests.

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    “In an effort to simplify interactions with our tools, we’ve also streamlined two commonly used features in the Graph API Explorer interface,” Facebook says.

    The HTTP request method, version selector, and path have been combined into one component.

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    Additionally, the Token Debugger tool has been combined within the Access Token section. Facebook says this should eliminate the need to switch between browser tabs when debugging access tokens. Developers will no doubt appreciate this.

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    The company is continuing to seek feedback on the Graph API Explorer for future improvements.

    Images via Facebook

  • Facebook About To Force Big Login Change

    Facebook About To Force Big Login Change

    At last year’s F8 developer conference, Facebook announced some changes that would give users more control over what info they choose to share with apps. The company introduced the new Facebook Login, which lets users edit the permissions they give an app upon log in. They also announced a Login Review process and other changes to the API, which the company said were designed to protect people’s information.

    Facebook Login from Facebook on Vimeo.

    At the time, Facebook asked all developers to upgrade their apps to use the new Login and API by April 30th, 2015, which is this Thursday. At that point, Facebook will begin to upgrade all apps to Graph API v2.0 and remove access to any permissions that haven’t been approved via Login Review.

    “Many developers have already upgraded their apps, and we’re excited about the results,” a spokesperson for Facebook tells WebProNews. “Our Login Review team has reviewed more than 40,000 apps. On average, apps using the new Facebook Login are requesting 50 percent fewer permissions than apps using the previous version of Login. When apps request only the permissions that are right for people using them, people feel more comfortable logging into those apps.”

    “In fact, the overall average rate of people logging in using the new Login is 11 percentage points higher than the previous version,” the spokesperson adds. “If a developer has not yet upgraded their app, it will be automatically upgraded on or after April 30, though they can still choose to upgrade at any time before that happens.”

    When an app is upgraded, people will see the new Facebook Login Dialog, which includes the ability to decline permissions, so keep in mind that users may not always give you all the data you’re after. Certain permissions like friends’ photos will no longer be available.

    New people logging into the app will be known by an app-scoped ID. You can find an FAQ about the changes here.

    When Facebook first announced all of this, the social network was suffering from a slump in its share of social logins. Recent research from both Gigya and Janrain, however, shows that Facebook is still absolutely dominating the landscape, even extending its lead.

    Interestingly, Facebook’s share of B2B social logins looks to have spiked significantly over the past quarter, largely at the expense of LinkedIn’s.

    “LinkedIn’s Q4 gain across B2B websites didn’t last in Q1—total share of logins for the professional network fell 10% to 25%,” said Janrain’s report. “This decrease actually marks their lowest total share of logins in the B2B category since they became an IDP in Q4 2012. Facebook’s share increased a dramatic 11% to 35% of total logins after hitting their lowest number for B2B sites last quarter. Upcoming changes to the LinkedIn API, including a new, independent API for enabling job applicants on a corporate website to ‘Apply with LinkedIn,’ as well changes to their social sharing settings may create further shifts over the next few quarters.”

    Facebook’s login changes are being lauded for improving user privacy.

    Images via Facebook

  • Facebook Gives Developers New App Testing Tool

    Facebook announced a new testing capability for developers, which enables those currently using Graph API v1.0 to preview how their app will behave using Graph API v2.0 or higher, before they actually change any code to upgrade.

    You may recall that Facebook announced at its f8 developer conference back in April that all developers have to upgrade to Graph API v2.0 or higher before v1.0 is deprecated on April 30, 2015. v2.0 and higher include features like the Tagged Places API, the Social Context API and Page Mentions.

    “We hope this testing capability makes it even easier for developers to upgrade their apps,” a spokesperson for the company said in an email.

    Facebook’s Dan Xu says in a blog post:

    When you prepare to upgrade, your first step is to see how your app behaves when it’s updated to v2.x. For some developers, this is as simple as a code change to ensure their API requests declare v2.0 or greater. But we’ve heard feedback that it’d be valuable to test how an app behaves in v2.x without making any code changes on your side.

    To make this easier, we’ve added the ability to override the applied API version for Test Users of your app. This allows you to login as a test user, and see exactly how your app will behave once you’ve migrated to v2.x.

    You can setup a version override for a Test User by going to the Test Users tab in the roles section of your app’s dashboard and selecting “Override the API version in Graph API requests for this test user”. Then, choose the version that you want applied to all API requests from that test user.

    Xu talks a little more in depth about this here.

    Image via Facebook

  • Facebook Launches App Ads Helper Tool, Updates App Ads, Parse SDK & Graph API

    Facebook announced some updates to App ads, the Parse SDK, and the Graph API Thursday evening. They also announced the launch of a new tool called the App Ads Helper.

    The App Ads Helper, the company says, helps you “answer common questions around your app and app ads.” The company will expand the number of questions it can answer over time. The idea is that it will help you better advertise your app on Facebook.

    Facebook said back in June that it was making the mobile app ad unit look more like its other ads, adding social context, and like, comment, and share buttons. They’ll now also be connected to a Facebook Page like other Facebook ad units – both on mobile and desktop. They’ve started migrating ads in the old format to the new one.

    As mentioned, Facebook has updated the Parse SDK.

    Owen Coutts explains on the Facebook Developer blog, “With the PHP SDK, developers can now access Parse from PHP rather than going through the REST API. Documentation has been updated with a new PHP Guide and Quickstart. This is our first SDK for a server-side language, and the first to be truly open-source.”

    They also announced the release of Graph API v2.1, along with updated iOS and Android SDKs, which work with the new version. You can read more specifically about this update here.

    Something else helpful to know is that Facebook also reportedly made some policy updates, which give developers 90 days to stop incentivizing users to like Pages.

    Image via Facebook

  • Share Dialog Comes To Facebook For iOS SDK

    At its Mobile Developer Conference in April, Facebook announced that it would be pushing Open Graph in a big way on mobile going forward. Part of those plans involved the Share Dialog – a tool that allows users to share on Facebook without having to login. It was only available as a limited beta at the time, but now all iOS developers can take advantage of it.

    Facebook announced on Monday that the native Share Dialog is now available on the Facebook for iOS SDK. Fortunately, developers will not have to jump through any hoops to integrate it into their apps. The native Share Dialog is a single line of code that can be easily implemented.

    Here’s what developers can look forward to when implementing the Share Dialog:

    The Share Dialog offers a lightweight and consistent way to enable sharing from your apps. People now have the option to share activity from apps through this dialog without needing to login to Facebook first. This eliminates 1 – 3 extra steps required for login when sharing via the feed dialog.

    The Share Dialog further improves upon the iOS 6 share sheet by adding support for publishing Open Graph actions to make it easier for people to tell their stories on mobile. In addition, people can now tag friends and share where they are enabling them to share in a more meaningful and engaging way, while helping even more people connect with your app.

    Back in April, Facebook said that the Share Dialog would also be making its way to Android. Unfortunately, nothing was said about that on Monday. For now, only iOS developers can take advantage of the native Share Dialog, but we can hope that an Android beta or release isn’t too far behind.

    If you want to learn more about the Share Dialog, check out the documentation.

  • Facebook Enhances Open Graph On Mobile, Updates iOS SDK

    At the Facebook Home unveiling, Mark Zuckerberg said that people are increasingly consuming content on mobile. It’s true for Facebook as is it true for just about everything else. That’s why Facebook needs to step up its mobile game, and it did just that today.

    At its Mobile Developer Conference in New York City, Facebook announced that Open Graph is coming to mobile in a big way. The first step is making sure everybody can integrate Open Graph into their mobile apps without having to deal with the complexity of the Graph API. The answer is the Object API – tools that let developers “directly create Open Graph objects” while no longer needing “to host webpages with Open Graph tags.” The new API is available to both mobile and Web apps so that nobody is left out.

    To make things even easier, Facebook is also introducing the Object Browser. It’s a “simple visual interface that helps you easily interact with the object data you publish.” For more on the Object API and the Object Browser, check out Facebook’s documentation.

    One of the core tenets of Facebook is sharing, and the social network is making it even easier on mobile with the Native Share Dialog. This particular tool allows people to share in-app actions without having to open or log into the Facebook app. It’s also incredibly easy to implement as it only requires a single line of code. The Native Share Dialog is available starting today in a limited beta on iOS with Android support coming soon. Check out Facebook’s documentation for more info.

    Users can look forward to an even friendlier Facebook mobile login experience as well as the social network is rolling out a number of enhancements to make things faster and more secure. The first is that Facebook has rebuilt its Login Dialog on mobile and Web to make it 20 percent faster. All Login Dialogs on mobile and non-game Web apps will be automatically upgraded to the new dialog today, but mobile apps can get even faster dialogs in the latest iOS and Android SDKs. If you want more info on Login Dialogs, check out Facebook’s documentation.

    As for security, Facebook has split Facebook permissions in mobile apps into two separate dialogs. The first is a mandatory dialog that asks users to share their Facebook data with the app. The second asks users if the app can post content to their Facebook wall on their behalf. In the second dialog, users can either agree, skip the step or customize which people the app can share stories with.

    On a final note, Facebook also released the latest version of its SDK for iOS. Version 3.5 of the iOS SDK includes support for all the above enhancements. The latest SDK only supports iOS 5 and above. You can download it here.

  • Facebook Retires The REST API For New Apps

    In late 2011, Facebook said that it would retiring the REST API to focus all of its efforts on the Graph API. Developers had over a year to make the jump, and now Facebook is finally pulling the plug.

    Facebook announced today that the REST API no longer available for new apps. Going forward, all new apps on Facebook must use the Graph API. Apps created after April 10 will receive an error code 3 upon trying to call the REST endpoints.

    So what does this mean for all the currently existing apps using the REST API? Facebook says those apps won’t be affected, and can continue to use the API. Of course, Facebook would really like it if developers made the jump to the Graph API. If enough developers make the jump, Facebook may even be able to fully retire the REST API so that all apps are on the same page.

    If you have yet to make the switch to the Graph API, you might want to check out the stellar improvements and features Facebook has been introducing to it lately. In fact, Facebook just launched a few more Open Graph tools to help make users’ timelines more interesting.

    As per tradition, Facebook also released its latest bug report. Since last week, 70 bugs were fixed, and 72 were accepted for further review. You can check out the full bug fix list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Introduces Custom Open Graph Stories With Flexible Sentences

    As a Facebook developer, are you frustrated by the rigid structure of Open Graph sentences? Facebook has a standard that it applies to every story so that each action is described in the same manner using the same action verbs. Honestly, it can get a little boring, and maybe even a little confusing. That’s why Facebook is now letting developers change up the sentences in custom Open Graph actions.

    Facebook announced that its introducing flexible sentences into Open Graph. The new feature will allow developers to customize the Open Graph stories that appear on user’s walls. As an example, Facebook used the app, Songkick, that allows users to find out when concerts are playing near their home. Here’s how the app would normally publish a story on Facebook:

    Facebook Custom Open Graph Stories Flexible Sentences

    As Facebook points out, the above story lacks context. It doesn’t actually let people know that Songkick is a concert app. With flexible sentences, the developers can now let people know exactly what the app does.

    Facebook Open Graph Flexible Sentences

    For even more control, Facebook has updated the configuration tool to list the most frequently used story formats first so developers know which ones will require customization.

    Facebook Open Graph Flexible Sentences

    Facebook notes that flexible sentences aren’t available for all Open Graph actions. Developers can only change the wording on custom actions. Built-in actions, which comprise the majority of Open Graph actions, will remain unchanged to provide a consistent experience across Facebook.

    Developers will gain access to flexible sentences today, and users will begin seeing them soon. If you want to learn more about flexible sentences, check out the documentation.

  • Facebook Graph API Gets New Page Metrics

    Facebook Graph API Gets New Page Metrics

    Facebook has been on a quest – to make the Graph API the best it can be. In that tireless pursuit, the social network has added a number of new features and functionality to the API to help developers get the most out of Facebook. The latest update to the API isn’t groundbreaking, but it will be useful nonetheless.

    The latest update coming to the Graph API are two new page metrics for benchmarking. The feature was announced in October as part of Facebook’s rollout of global brand pages. At the time, Facebook had this to say about it:

    In addition to providing better localized experiences for your customers, we want to make it easier for you to measure your audience in each country as well as benchmark your brand against other brands you care about. Later this year we will include the country-level fan counts for all Pages (both those using the Global Pages framework as well as Pages that haven’t transitioned to the new framework) publicly in our API. This will enable your internal teams to track how each market is performing, as well as to compare your fan base on a country-by-country level with other Pages on Facebook by accessing the data available via our API.

    Now the feature is available in the API, and Facebook has some more information on the feature. For once, the metrics included in this first iteration are like count and PTAT (people talking about this). Facebook will take this information and allow brands to compare it to other brands to see which products are being talked about more on Facebook. To access this new information, just hit up the new ‘global_brand_like_count’ and ‘global_brand_talking_about_count’ fields on the Insights object.

    As for the weekly bug report, 288 were reported and 37 were fixed. Facebook has also accepted 72 bugs for further review. You can check out the full list by hitting up the blog post.

  • Facebook Graph API Now Supports In-Game Groups

    The past week has been relatively slow in the world of Facebook development. When that happens, there’s a good chance that the weekly Operation Developer Love update will be bursting at the seams with new features and updates. Facebook didn’t disappoint as this week’s update is full of new features that developers will want to start trying out.

    The Graph API takes on another function this week as Facebook introduces groups for games and apps. Developers can use the Graph API to build up groups around their games. Much like regular Facebook groups or the more traditional clan in online gaming, game developers can invite strangers to join together in a group to work towards a common goal. It could potentially solve one of the major problems with social games – not having enough friends all playing the same game to unlock higher tier rewards.

    Like most new additions, Facebook is rolling groups out as a beta to all apps and games in App Center. More work will be put into it over time, but developers will want to help Facebook work out the kinks so both parties can provide the best experience possible to end users. Interested developers can get started now by reading the documentation.

    Before you get into Open Graph groups, developers first have to prove to Facebook that it can handle the responsibility of Open Graph. Developers can now upload screenshots of their Open Graph usage during the Open Graph Action submission process. This will help Facebook expedite the submission process by being able to see that new developers understand the Guidelines and responsibilities that come with Open Graph development.

    Fans of Facebook’s JavaScript SDK are in for a treat this week as there is now a debug version of the SDK now available. Facebook says that it’s loaded un-minified and contains stricter type checking. It will hopefully provide more accurate data on errors when developers are debugging their apps. You can see more here.

    Facebook’s Platform Policy page has been updated to address use of its social plugins. Developers who use Facebook’s own social plugins “must not sell or purchase placement or participate in any like exchange program.” You can read more.

    The Facebook for WordPress Plugin has been updated with improved stability, individual settings pages, custom poste type support, and custom post status support. Version 1.1 of the WordPress plugin requires WordPress 3.3 or newer. You can read more here.

    Facebook also announced today that all North American users are now being moved to the HTTPS protocol. The rest of the world will be following shortly. The move to HTTPS will make the site more secure for everybody.

    As always, Facebook rounds out its post with the weekly bug report. The social network reports that 236 bugs were reported this week, and 11 bugs were fixed. Thirty-eight bugs were accepted for further review. You can check out the full bug fix list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Improves Their Android SDK

    Facebook has recently updated their iOS app and the iOS SDK to improve the performance of both. By all accounts, it seems to be working fine now. Now it’s time for Facebook to fix their Android app and that starts with fixing the Android SDK for developers.

    As part of the weekly Operation Developer Love update, Facebook announced that they’re bringing improvements to the Android SDK. The update includes the usual stability improvements, but they’re also adding support for their new mobile ads for apps program. Facebook claims that these ads drive millions of people to apps so Android developers may want to start taking advantage of the new program.

    Alongside the improvements to the Android SDK, Facebook is working on an issue that affects their iOS developers. They found that their iOS app changes the Facebook login URL to a question mark instead of a pound symbol. Apps that utilize the new Facebook SDK for iOS aren’t affected, but it may mess up apps that don’t use the SDK.

    Facebook has also published an update to the ever-evolving Graph API. Developers no longer need an app access token to publish scores and achievements for users playing their games. Instead, developers will just need a user access token and a server to host the open graph objects for achievements.

    On a final note, Facebook has opened subscriptions up to test users. Developers have already been implementing subscriptions into their apps, but new developers can now test their subscriptions before opening them up to all players. It’s suggested that you either go with subscriptions or in-app purchases. Mixing them may only serve to anger players.

    Like always, Facebook has released the bug report for the week. There were 175 bugs reported this week with 51 of them being fixed. You can see the full bug list at the blog post.

  • Facebook Continues To Improve The Graph API

    Facebook needs to continually improve its services so that users, developers and investors remain happy. The social network has given a lot of recent attention to its Open Graph and related services. The trend continues today with an update to the Graph API.

    Facebook announced three updates to the Graph API today. The company claims that the updates “make it easier and faster to access data from the social graph.” Ease and speed will be key in the coming months as Facebook and Facebook-connected apps continue the march to mobile.

    The first major update is Field Expansion. Facebook says that it “significantly improves performance for API calls and reduces your coding effort for retrieving data.” In short, developers can use fewer API calls to get the exact data they need. Developers will also be able to create nested queries. Check out the documentation for more details.

    Documentation can only go so far in explaining new concepts though. For those who need some practical experience, Facebook has added field expansion to the Graph API Explorer. You can now play around with the new feature at your leisure without the risk of screwing up your own app.

    The final update – pagination – makes data sets easier to read. The change will make definitive indications for when you reach the end or beginning of a data set. The “previous” and “next” buttons will also vanish when there is no new data set to peruse. Facebook claims that the change will lead to “faster request processing times.” You can read up on pagination here.

    Facebook was a little slow last week in releasing new updates, but today’s update may signal another wave of major updates to their products and services. I’m still holding out for news of a better and faster Android app any day now.

  • Facebook Updating Open Graph Publishing Guidelines

    It’s pretty much a given now that Facebook wants every app developer to push Open Graph. As more app developers take to Open Graph and more people become concerned with privacy, Facebook will have to amend their policies to address those concerns. This week’s Operation Developer Love sets some guidelines to address any concerns that users may have with Open Graph publishing their data.

    Facebook has updated their Open Graph publishing guidelines to give developers more time to implement the changes that are required of them to create a more secure and user-friendly app ecosystem. That’s why Facebook is introducing a Breaking Change policy into Open Graph guidelines that will give developers 90 days to update an existing app to comply with the new guidelines.

    To that end, developers have 90 days to amend apps with built-in watch and read actions. Unfortunately, that means that you can no longer use a custom action for reading an article or watching a video. Even if Facebook previously cleared an app that had a custom action, it must be updated to use built-in actions. After the change has been made, you must resubmit your app to be approved.

    If you happen to use built-in watch and read actions with your content, you can only publish on a person’s wall after they have engaged with the content for 10 or more seconds. If the video is less than 10 seconds, a user must watch the entire video to have it published. While Facebook doesn’t explain its reasoning, it’s pretty easy to see that they’re hoping to cut down on spam. There are probably some app developers who immediately publish actions even if the user in question only visits the site for a few seconds.

    Another pillar of the Open Graph platform is the tagging of people and locations. New guidelines have been put in place to discourage warrantless tagging of everybody on somebody’s friends list. Apps must now only encourage users to tag friends if they have actually done something together. It’s also encouraged to only tag a place if the user is currently there.

    Aside from changes to its Open Graph publishing guidelines, Facebook has also added an FQL query tab to the Graph API Explorer. It’s pointed out that you can still run FQL queries the old fashioned way through issuing an HTTP GET request. The tab just makes it easier and faster to experiment with various queries.

    The bug report this week saw 150 bugs reported with 18 of them being fixed. Check out the post on Facebook to see the full list of bugs that were fixed. Be sure to also check back next week for the new list of breaking changes coming in July.

  • Facebook’s Plans to Take Over the Web

    So, earlier in the week, we talked about how absorbed the web is going to get by Facebook. Based on Facebook’s announcements at F8 today, that is most certainly the goal of the company, and given the tremendous adoption of Facebook by users in general, and by important partners with content, get ready to get more absorbed.

    There were three major announcements made during the keynote. These were:

    1. The Open Graph

    2. Social Plug-ins

    3. Graph API

    Essentially, Facebook thinks connections are going to become the new links. This will theoretically happen through what they’re calling the Open Graph. Zuckerberg explains this:

    Facebook has focused mostly on mapping out the part of the graph around people and their relationships.

    At the same time, other sites and services have been mapping out other parts of the graph so you can get relevant information about different types of things. For example, Yelp maps out the best local businesses and Pandora maps out which songs are related to each other.

    All of these connections are important parts of the social graph, but until now it hasn’t been possible to easily share the connections you make on sites like Yelp or Pandora with your friends on Facebook. And you haven’t been able to bring your friends from Facebook to share experiences on these sites or personalize them to you.

    Facebook's Open Graph

    The announcement of the social plug-ins will play a significant role in making the connections involved in this Open Graph. These include a "like" button for the web, which the company as already deemed the most important of the plug-ins. When you stick a like button on your site, that connection will be integrated with Facebook through the Graph API. The activity will go the news feed, but it will also go to other relevant places in your Facebook profile.

    Taylor shared examples from partners IMDB, Pandora, and ESPN. If you "like" a band on Pandora, that will go to the appropriate bands-you-like section on Facebook. On IMDB, every movie page will have a like button, so if you "like" a movie, it will be reflected in your movies section in your Facebook profile. It goes both ways though. You’re not just sending stuff back to Facebook. For example, there will be "like" buttons associated with athletes on their profile pages on ESPN.com. If you "like" one of these athletes, you can get updates about them from ESPN, via Facebook. Expect a lot of interesting two-way things to happen with the Graph API, as more and more developers are able to harness its power.

    Other plug-ins include boxes for activity feeds and recommendations you can stick on your site. You can check out Facebook’s social plug-ins here.

    Basically, the gist of the entire thing is that Facebook is taking over the web, and sites will be afraid not to take part. Facebook is injecting itself into every part of the web possible. As far as I can tell, this Open Graph is essentially a web itself. While it may not become THE web, it may increasingly become the one that matters.

    Are we headed toward a point that if you are not somehow connected to Facebook you are not connected to the world at large? By the way, this is not going to do anything to slow Facebook’s growth down. Share your thoughts.