facebook

And just when I thought that setting up Apache, mod_python and Lighty with Django was cool, and I haven't even started playing with mod_wsgi or nginx (the powerful Russian HTTP server, pronounced engine X) came the requirement to move the Django application I'm developing for Facebook to Google App Engine, the latest, and it seems the coolest, player in the cloud computing arena.

While my code was running on a pure Django environment I setup the callback url in Facebook's developer application to point to my local server, some simple port forwarding in my router did the trick. Now I wanted to do the same using Google App Engine's development server.

The latest Facebook changes have introduced many nice touches for both users and developers but something that's causing lots of troubles is the bookmarks feature for applications.

Before the changes every Facebook user had a sidebar on the profile with the applications he or she had installed, now the applications are on the bottom part of the page inside an expandable menu but the only applications listed there are the ones a user has bookmarked.

The problem is that the bookmarking process is a mess. There's a long thread on the Facebook developer's forums that starts with a post listing all the clicks and guesses needed to get bookmarks working, and that's in the case of a smart user. Regular users may never find out how bookmarks work and lots of nice applications, including the ones a user accepted to add, will be lost.

That's not good for users and it's super bad for Facebook applications developers. By the way, if you're not coding a Facebook application yet you may will be doing it soon, trust me.

What most people are asking for is that Facebook forgets about its bookmarks concept and simply provide a menu listing the applications a user has recently added and/or used. If you want to have your say on this matter I suggest you post on the original discussion at Facebook.

Of course, a clearly written and visible FAQ for users would be great too.

I've been writing a simple Django application for Facebook these days. I'm really enjoying how clean Django's code is and its very well thought classes and methods. It really makes web development faster.

I started with some simple HTML running locally on Django's development server and then updated my templates to output FBML based on the value of a variable I called IN_FACEBOOK and inserted into my settings.py.

After adding PyFacebook to talk to Facebook's API from Python I configured my new application according to Facebook's instructions.

Finally I changed my router's port forwarding settings to allow Facebook to see my home server's public IP, which is dynamic and provided by my ISP.

Everything ran ok up to this point and then I started noticing that after each change on my application's code Facebook returned a blank page with an HTTP 200 message.

It seemed like a connection issue and I moved the application to my real server, which has a fixed public IP, but the problem persisted. After every code change Facebook returned a blank page with the HTTP 200 message. I needed to refresh the browser three or more times to get my application loading.

My application is still on development but even so I decided to replace Django's server with an Apache and mod_python setup.

Presto¡ That was the source of the problem. It seems Django's development server response time is too high for Facebook.

I had a good day yesterday. After spending almost six hours debugging a problem with Internet Explorer (yeah, old news) and a Drupal based Facebook application we're writing for 49st I finally found a solution.

However, this morning I found that the same code that was working yesterday showed some nasty error message. What now?

I recently posted a few ideas on the opportunities for web developers in Facebook.

I decided to use DynDNS for creating a host name for my local DSL connected Ubuntu box, it's easier editing and making changes that way instead of using the other servers I have in a couple of data centers. I used the hostname as a callback url for a Facebook test application. Facebook saw my host and the application worked as expected.

A couple of hours later I disconnected from the Net to take a break, when I got back received a new IP address from my ISP's DHCP server and DynDNS updated my host information to point to the new IP. Unfortunately now Facebook can't find my callback url anymore. I tried editing settings and changed the host name to the new public IP address to discard, still no luck and I'm getting this error:

The URL http://xx.xx.xx.xx/facebook/application-name/ did not respond.

There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of application-name are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

Is Facebook caching my older IP address? That was my first thought but even putting the actual public IP of my box in the callback url didn't work.

Is this a temporal glitch in the Facebook Platform or am I missing something else?

I'll keep testing but if you have any ideas I'd love to know.

Fixed: I'm an idiot! I forgot changing the IP address of my database server, also in my local box. Now everything's working again.

I've been in the social networking scene for some time already, I know the power of connecting with the right people and I love to be a part of the online society, gosh, I have a good life thanks to that! but I didn't realize how big all the Facebook frenzy was and the many new opportunities there are for us, web developers, until I started playing with the Facebook Platform.

A cool project in which I'm currently working involves some Drupal modules talking to Facebook and it's a great opportunity to explore new directions in the development of online projects.

As many of you may know (let's imagine you're a regular reader, if you aren't what are you waiting to grab the feed?), I'm a big fan of Second Life, so it was big news when I found a cool group of residents in Facebook, I've just joined.

I'm sure we'll see many new projects involving metaverses like Second Life and social networking platforms like Facebook sprouting online quite soon. Yeah, social networking platforms, not simply sites anymore, Facebook have changed it all.

There're plenty of opportunities for people creating online experiences and if you thought there were already too many fields in the web development arena think again, soon we'll see Facebook apps experts and Second Life experiences builders along with Drupal hackers in web teams.

Gosh!, these are really exciting times for those of us who love this stuff.

So, where do you think you're heading as a web developer? If we can call ourselves that way any longer.