Facebook connect is very slow, can I use AJAX? - php

Question

I'm implementing the facebook php sdk and using it for user login/connect.
Everything works as expected, however, at the top of each page, I need to call
$facebook->api('/me') to determine if the user is logged in or not..
This call is very slow, sometimes, taking up to 2 seconds to return.
So, any interaction by the user, always has a 1-2 sec delay before any page loads..
I suspect, it's because, the $facebook->api('/me') call is using httpS ..
Any suggestions....
$facebook = new Facebook(array( 'appId' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx', 'secret' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',));
$user = $facebook->getUser();
if ($user)
{
try { $user_profile = $facebook->api('/me','GET'); }
catch (FacebookApiException $e) { error_log($e); $user = null; }
}
$login_parms = array('scope' => 'user_birthday', 'redirect_uri' => 'http://xxx.com/login');
$login_link = $facebook->getLoginUrl($login_parms);
if($user)
{
/* logged in */
}
else
{
/* not */
}

Answer 1

You really shouldn't perform the Facebook API request on each page load. Only do it once when the user logs in. Then you can store the "logged in" flag in the session (or a signed cookie).
If you need to store e.g. some of the user's facebook profile information, also put it in the session or your database.

Answer 2

Add some spinning wheel where login form is, then call ajax on document ready to your php script, script returns false or loged in user data (or more data if you need - redirect url) and then depending on result show form to login or display currently loged in user.
What i mean Javascript will handle all logic depending on what is returned from server, redirects, change UI etc.
Another way is to cache (session with expiration) first call to facebook if user is loged in remember it. And check if that Session variable is present and not yet expired. Only call again when doing some sensitive tasks or get expired.

Answer 3

If you do not need to get "fresh" values from $facebook->api("/me").
Then I would suggest you cache the response, if you use any PHP-framework (eg. Zend, Yii, Codeigniter) this should be really straight forward.
If you're not using a PHP-framework i suggest you still look into the excellent ZF documentation for their cache solution.
Zend Framework - Cache
If you, however, need fresh values each load you can make a simple page that only returns the $facebook->api("/me") part and returns it as bare HTML. Then simply keep a or similar that recieves the response when it's finished.
An easy solution would be using jQuery and just write:
$("#div-id").load("/page-that-returns-facebook-api-me-result");