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Getting started with the Facebook SDK for PHP

Whether you're developing a website with Facebook login, creating a Facebook Canvas app or Page tab, the Facebook SDK for PHP does all the heavy lifting for you making it as easy as possible to deeply integrate into the Facebook platform.

Autoloading & namespaces

The Facebook SDK for PHP v5 is coded in compliance with PSR-4. This means it relies heavily on namespaces so that class files can be loaded for you automatically.

It would be advantageous to familiarize yourself with the concepts of namespacing and autoloading if you are not already acquainted with them.

System requirements

  • PHP 5.4 or greater
  • Composer (optional)

Installing the Facebook SDK for PHP

There are two methods to install the Facebook SDK for PHP. The recommended installation method is by using Composer. If are unable to use Composer for your project, you can still install the SDK manually by downloading the source files and including the autoloader.

Installing with Composer (recommended)

Composer is the recommended way to install the Facebook SDK for PHP. Simply run the following in the root of your project.

composer require facebook/graph-sdk

The Facebook SDK starting adhering to SemVer with version 5. Previous to version 5, the SDK did not follow SemVer.

Once you do this, composer will edit your composer.json file and download the latest version of the SDK and put it in the /vendor/ directory.

Make sure to include the Composer autoloader at the top of your script.

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

Manually installing (if you really have to)

First, download the source code and unzip it wherever you like in your project.

Download the SDK for PHP v5

Then include the autoloader provided in the SDK at the top of your script.

require_once __DIR__ . '/path/to/php-graph-sdk/src/Facebook/autoload.php';

The autoloader should be able to auto-detect the proper location of the source code.

Keeping things tidy

The source code includes myriad files that aren't necessary for use in a production environment. If you'd like to strip out everything except the core files, follow this example.

For this example we'll assume the root of your website is /var/html.

After downloading the source code with the button above, extract the files in a temporary directory.

Move the folder src/Facebook to the root of your website installation or where ever you like to put third-party code. For this example we'll rename the Facebook directory to facebook-sdk-v5.

The path the the core SDK files should now be located in /var/html/facebook-sdk-v5 and inside will also be the autoload.php file.

Assuming we have a script called index.php in the root of our web project, we need to include the autoloader at the top of our script.

require_once __DIR__ . '/facebook-sdk-v5/autoload.php';

If the autoloader is having trouble detecting the path to the source files, we can define the location of the source code before the require_once statement.

define('FACEBOOK_SDK_V4_SRC_DIR', __DIR__ . '/facebook-sdk-v5/');
require_once __DIR__ . '/facebook-sdk-v5/autoload.php';

Configuration and setup

Warning: This assumes you have already created and configured a Facebook App, which you can obtain from the App Dashboard.

Before we can send requests to the Graph API, we need to load our app configuration into the Facebook\Facebook service.

$fb = new Facebook\Facebook([
  'app_id' => '{app-id}',
  'app_secret' => '{app-secret}',
  'default_graph_version' => 'v2.10',
  ]);

You'll need to replace the {app-id} and {app-secret} with your Facebook app's ID and secret which can be obtained from the app settings tab.

Warning: It's important that you specify a default_graph_version value as this will give you more control over which version of Graph you want to use. If you don't specify a default_graph_version, the SDK for PHP will choose one for you and it might not be one that is compatible with your app.

The Facebook\Facebook service ties all the components of the SDK for PHP together. See the full reference for the Facebook\Facebook service.

Authentication and authorization

The SDK can be used to support logging a Facebook user into your site using Facebook Login which is based on OAuth 2.0.

Most all request made to the Graph API require an access token. We can obtain user access tokens with the SDK using the helper classes.

Obtaining an access token from redirect

For most websites, you'll use the Facebook\Helpers\FacebookRedirectLoginHelper to generate a login URL with the getLoginUrl() method. The link will take the user to an app authorization screen and upon approval, will redirect them back to a URL that you specified. On the redirect callback page we can obtain the user access token as an AccessToken entity.

For this example we'll assume login.php will present the login link and the user will be redirected to login-callback.php where we will obtain the access token.

# login.php
$fb = new Facebook\Facebook([/* . . . */]);

$helper = $fb->getRedirectLoginHelper();
$permissions = ['email', 'user_likes']; // optional
$loginUrl = $helper->getLoginUrl('http://{your-website}/login-callback.php', $permissions);

echo '<a href="' . $loginUrl . '">Log in with Facebook!</a>';

Warning: The FacebookRedirectLoginHelper makes use of sessions to store a CSRF value. You need to make sure you have sessions enabled before invoking the getLoginUrl() method. This is usually done automatically in most web frameworks, but if you're not using a web framework you can add session_start(); to the top of your login.php & login-callback.php scripts.

# login-callback.php
$fb = new Facebook\Facebook([/* . . . */]);

$helper = $fb->getRedirectLoginHelper();
try {
  $accessToken = $helper->getAccessToken();
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookResponseException $e) {
  // When Graph returns an error
  echo 'Graph returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookSDKException $e) {
  // When validation fails or other local issues
  echo 'Facebook SDK returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
}

if (isset($accessToken)) {
  // Logged in!
  $_SESSION['facebook_access_token'] = (string) $accessToken;

  // Now you can redirect to another page and use the
  // access token from $_SESSION['facebook_access_token']
}

Obtaining an access token from a Facebook Canvas context

If your app is on Facebook Canvas, use the getAccessToken() method on Facebook\Helpers\FacebookCanvasHelper to get an AccessToken entity for the user.

Warning: The FacebookCanvasHelper will detect a signed request for you and attempt to obtain an access token using the payload data from the signed request. The signed request will only contain the data needed to obtain an access token if the user has already authorized your app sometime in the past. If they have not yet authorized your app the getAccessToken() will return null and you will need to log the user in with either the redirect method or by using the SDK for JavaScript and then use the SDK for PHP to obtain the access token from the cookie the SDK for JavaScript set.

# example-canvas-app.php
$fb = new Facebook\Facebook([/* . . . */]);

$helper = $fb->getCanvasHelper();
try {
  $accessToken = $helper->getAccessToken();
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookResponseException $e) {
  // When Graph returns an error
  echo 'Graph returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookSDKException $e) {
  // When validation fails or other local issues
  echo 'Facebook SDK returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
}

if (isset($accessToken)) {
  // Logged in.
}

If your app exists within the context of a Page tab, you can obtain an access token using the example above since a Page tab is very similar to a Facebook Canvas app. But if you'd like to use a Page-tab-specific helper, you can use the Facebook\Helpers\FacebookPageTabHelper

Obtaining an access token from the SDK for JavaScript

If you're already using the Facebook SDK for JavaScript to authenticate users, you can obtain the access token with PHP by using the FacebookJavaScriptHelper. The getAccessToken() method will return an AccessToken entity.

# example-obtain-from-js-cookie-app.php
$fb = new Facebook\Facebook([/* . . . */]);

$helper = $fb->getJavaScriptHelper();
try {
  $accessToken = $helper->getAccessToken();
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookResponseException $e) {
  // When Graph returns an error
  echo 'Graph returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookSDKException $e) {
  // When validation fails or other local issues
  echo 'Facebook SDK returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
}

if (isset($accessToken)) {
  // Logged in
}

Warning: Make sure you set the {cookie:true} option when you initialize the SDK for JavaScript. This will make the SDK for JavaScript set a cookie on your domain containing information about the user in the form of a signed request.

Extending the access token

When a user first logs into your app, the access token your app receives will be a short-lived access token that lasts about 2 hours. It's generally a good idea to exchange the short-lived access token for a long-lived access token that lasts about 60 days.

To extend an access token, you can make use of the OAuth2Client.

// OAuth 2.0 client handler
$oAuth2Client = $fb->getOAuth2Client();

// Exchanges a short-lived access token for a long-lived one
$longLivedAccessToken = $oAuth2Client->getLongLivedAccessToken('{access-token}');

See more about long-lived and short-lived access tokens.

Making Requests to the Graph API

Once you have an instance of the Facebook\Facebook service and obtained an access token, you can begin making calls to the Graph API.

In this example we will send a GET request to the Graph API endpoint /me. The /me endpoint is a special alias to the user node endpoint that references the user or Page making the request.

$fb = new Facebook\Facebook([/* . . . */]);

// Sets the default fallback access token so we don't have to pass it to each request
$fb->setDefaultAccessToken('{access-token}');

try {
  $response = $fb->get('/me');
  $userNode = $response->getGraphUser();
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookResponseException $e) {
  // When Graph returns an error
  echo 'Graph returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookSDKException $e) {
  // When validation fails or other local issues
  echo 'Facebook SDK returned an error: ' . $e->getMessage();
  exit;
}

echo 'Logged in as ' . $userNode->getName();

The get() method will return a Facebook\FacebookResponse which is an entity that represents an HTTP response from the Graph API.

To get the response in the form of a nifty collection, we call getGraphUser() which returns a Facebook\GraphNodes\GraphUser entity which represents a user node.

If you don't care about fancy collections and just want the response as a plain-old array, you can call the getDecodedBody() method on the FacebookResponse entity.

try {
  $response = $fb->get('/me');
} catch(Facebook\Exceptions\FacebookSDKException $e) {
  // . . .
  exit;
}

$plainOldArray = $response->getDecodedBody();

For a full list of all of the components that make up the SDK for PHP, see the SDK for PHP reference page.