Facebook iOS: Use Access Token in PHP

Yes that's right. As of the time of this writing, it is possible to use the user granted access_token back in some server side scripting language like PHP. If you currently have a 255 varchar field size for access_tokens in your database, you may want to bump that up a bit.

The time I made the sample code ran and allowed me to log in (one that came bundled with the Facebook iOS SDK from GitHub), I began realizing that the token quite have different format than the one we usually see in web-based apps (e.g. FB iFrame app).

The usual token looks something like this:

213455681425|1.BGgrgnfWrdpG_X18.3600.1213252135.2-1334679|dHcDbxGbeYbLg3SRgw12fdf4gd60

..while in mobile:

v9ylvkttPnuFWUX4KVdjDPB0SRXkuKX7z281rqjHuG0.eyJpdiI6ImEwWXBDaEtncWpDTU5ibUNuQWdROWcifQ.Y-DwxRY2ZAFZiP7EVuR-HksXqmGw9LXP6umGrfz2XnjSLm0a508u7_jXq0_Kz5a2S8AUUulzUvIRVxTS51_i6VfSByOCbFBIKoBe0-n-Pa8NC29wbuVmGJLvq4W-ezhv0DzA3diiCIqCybt9ELDXoA

The plan was, allow users to connect to our application using FB. Then once he approved it, we take a copy of the access_token and save it back to the server. Same access_token will be used once he logs in to his account using our web-based app.

Well, so far so good. Let me know if yours doesn't work.


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Facebook iOS SDK: Let users Connect & Login with FB

Here's how to let your users connect and login to your iOS app using Facebook. The first thing you got to do is download the Facebook iOS SDK. If you have Git installed, you can also do this by pulling from GitHub.

git clone git://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk.git