OnMyList Blog: Facebook app invites with RoR

Facebook app invites with RoR

Andrew — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:25:00 -0400

Ray and I spent quite a while to get everything in our Facebook app to work. There were some blog posts about how get invites to work but they are outdated (and they involve some nasty FQLs).

One thing that I did was to create a beta fb application to test all this stuff out with our beta server, this helps a lot.

So in case you’re going crazy adding invites to your fb app, here’s how we did it. Keep in mind that the fb platform changes rapidly so by the time you read this there is probably a better way to do invites.

In your canvas partial, add a link to http://apps.facebook.com/[yourappname]/invite

here’s how our invite method looks like:

  def invite
    @appname = ENV['RAILS_ENV'] == 'production' ? 'onmylist' : 'onmylist_beta'
    @appid = ENV['RAILS_ENV'] == 'production' ? 12345678 : 01234567

    if fbsession.is_valid?
      @friends2exclude = fbsession.friends_getAppUsers.uid_list        
    end

    render :partial => "select_fbml" 
  end

note: app id’s are not real! :)

Here’s the select_fbml partial:

<fb:fbml>
<fb:subtitle>Invite your friends to join OnMyList</fb:subtitle>

<div style="background-color:#f2fbdc;padding-bottom:0;margin-bottom:0">

<% join_button = CGI::escapeHTML "<fb:req-choice url='http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=#{@appid}' label='Join OnMyList'>" %>

<fb:request-form 
method="POST" 
invite="true" 
type="OnMyList" 
action="http://apps.facebook.com/<%= @appname %>/"
content="Let's join OnMyList so you can list your pants off! <%= join_button %>">

<fb:multi-friend-selector
rows="5"
exclude_ids="<%= @friends2exclude.join(',') %>"
showborder="false" 
actiontext="Here are your friends who don't have OnMyList. Invite them now!">
</fb:request-form>

</div>
</fb:fbml>

the exclude_ids param is to exclude your friends who already have the app installed.

"Facebook app invites with RoR" by Amber Marks

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:30:00 -0500

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"Facebook app invites with RoR" by Valerie Rosario

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"Facebook app invites with RoR" by Bernard Stark

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"Facebook app invites with RoR" by yagnesh

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:06:32 -0400

I’ve having the same problem as fs above. I get an 500 -Internal Server Error and the stack trace leads back to require “facebook_rails_controller_extensions”. Does anyone have any idea what that is about?

"Facebook app invites with RoR" by Raymond Law

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:06:14 -0500

I don't think so, because Facebook handles the actual invitation. We used the above code to generate and present the invitation page in Facebook. After the user selects friends to invite and Facebook sends the invitations, the user is redirected to the canvas page, I believe.

"Facebook app invites with RoR" by Charlie

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:18:00 -0500

Hey, Great code piece, it helps a lot. I have a quick question. Do you know if its possible to extract the number of invited users and use that in your rails app? Thanks, Charlie - rcwhite@colby.edu