Simple question really, I've been looking all over the Internet probably for the past few days for several hours a day looking for some solid information on OpenID and Facebook Connect integration on a website.
I have seen the same names popup such as Janrain offering their solution, but I see a lot of websites such as Invision Power Board forums and even here at StackOverflow utilising different solutions.
The main two logins we wish to accept on our site are Facebook and Twitter. I've really been looking for a tutorial, or at least a guide to incorporating this functionality into a PHP website.
If anyone has any information or any pointers that would be great.
Thanks!
I'd start with the official docs. They're pretty good.
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
http://dev.twitter.com/pages/sign_in_with_twitter
The twitter one is a little more obtuse, but it's still pretty easy to follow.
For Twitter, just use their simple JavaScript SDK:
http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere/begin
But I would really avoid implementing these services myself. E.g. Twitter anywhere is maybe painless to setup, but then you rely on their JavaScript. It's been down before and then your page takes ages to load or doesn't load at all.
I haven't tried the new Facebook APIs, but 2 years ago, I wasted a way a week of my life trying to integrate their API and the general idea I got was -- unless you know someone at Facebook that can check out some log or let you know why this API doesn't respond like it's supposed to, you're just on your own.
We do use Janrain's engage product (free). It works really, really well.
Dealing with all these services directly is a royal (!) PITA. They are down, change how they work, mis-behave -- it's good to outsource that to someone who seems to know all the ins and outs. In our case Janrain.
There's a copy and paste Facebook login button solution out there. It's also free. It's developed by LaunchBit. You could try that.
http://toolkit.launchbit.com
Related
I am working on a pretty challenging project (at least challenging for me and my modest skills), which is based on Buddypress. Basically, I have this Buddypress Install, which I modified to fit my needs, which are for the most part localization services.
My groups component are now geo-localised, and everything looks fine. The thing is, I would like my users to be able to check-in the group when they are on location, as you would on Foursquare. I was wondering if anyone could help me with that. Is there a plugin available to do such a thing ? Or maybe a tutorial on how to make one ? Somebody might have already done this, or has an idea on how I could make it work in Buddypress.
I would appreciate any insight on this as I don't really know where to look first. I threw a glance at the foursquare API, but I would like to be able to use its functionalities without having to go through foursquare to check-in.
Thanks a lot in advance !
There is BP Foursquare API ( http://wpmu.org/daily-tip-want-to-connect-buddypress-with-foursquare-check-out-the-new-bp-foursquare-api/) that connects your BuddyPress powered website to the XML or JSON Foursquare API. This is not plug & play solution.
Recently, I have been building a website and I really want to have a forum integrated with it. I have already implemented an OpenID login for my system and I would really like that to carry over to the forum.
I've been looking around at many open-source/free php forums, but I cannot find one that has OpenID integration. Has anyone implemented this or seen any implementations? Am I using the wrong terms when I do my searches for forum software? I really want to avoid my users having to make 2 logins/2 profiles/2 etc. for my site and I personally think it would be a lot cleaner to have a universal login using OpenID.
I know coding my own forum would be reinventing the wheel, but I really want a single login and profile solution!
Edit:
Is it naive of me to think that a php forum would be able to use my already existing profile system in place of theirs? Obviously the forum is expecting certain user information to be stored, but would it be better for me to convert my profile system into a forum's system instead of vice versa?
SMF does have it in 2.0 (or a working plugin anyway)
phpBB has OpenID support using this plugin: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpbb-openid/
I agree with Mchl, SMF has OpenID built in. I have not gotten OpenID to work on my forum with any other software.
I am going to be creating a website which will require up-to-date prices on certain iPhone apps, which I know is possible because the website AppShopper does just that except they do it with every website. I am not that skilled using PHP though I am a quick learner.
I think that I will need to create a spider/scraper that takes the values from the website though I have done lots of research and I haven't figured it out, though I this may not be what I need. I am not familiar with the creation of spiders, though I am willing to learn. This will not be the key-point of the site so it doesn't need to be the most robust system, I would just like to be able to have it updated the prices
I would appreciate any help or suggestions that anyone has to offer.
There is an official Search API provided by Apple. I haven't used it myself, but it's worth looking into. Read more here.
I once had a decent implementation of my Twitter feed on my website but apparently Twitter's authentication has changed and all my functionality is broken. All I need to do is retrieve my timeline, including tweets and retweets - nothing fancy, not an app, nothing.
I'm having a terribly hard time finding any resources to help me do this. I need things spelled out for me clearly and concisely, which none of the tutorials I've found (especially on Twitter) seem to do. Can anybody help me? Please?
Thanks,
Mike
Twitter now uses oAuth for their API authentication. You can find a large number of PHP oAuth frameworks/libraries out there that should be able to facilitate your needs. I have used twitteroauth by Abraham Williams. You can find it easily enough on GitHub.
I am creating a little flash game for the facebook platform, but I am finding it very difficult to get any decent documentation on the graph api and the PHP SDK, so if anyone has a decent resource for a beginner to go and learn the basics, I would appreciate it very much, as I am struggling to grasp the concept.
Thanx!
I agree that the docs can be pretty hard work for facebook. If you are looking to use the Graph API tho, bear in mind that it is just a REST API that uses oAuth for authentication, much the same as Twitter, SoundCloud etc.
The most awkward bit I found was authenticating properly so I would suggest checking out the oAuth website
http://oauth.net/
They also have some PHP samples which were what I used as a starting point. I'd definitely recommend starting from these rather than trying to build your own setup from scratch.
http://oauth.googlecode.com/svn/code/php/
I also found it handy to refer to the docs on some of the other sites that use oAuth, such as Twitter and SoundCloud as it helped build my overall understanding of what is going on, even if there were a few small differences from one site to another
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Authentication
http://wiki.github.com/soundcloud/api/02-authentication
Personally I would suggest just trying to do a basic oAuth-authenticated request to begin with. Facebook Graph has a few extra options such as using scope for extended permissions. Whilst you will probably need to use these in the end, once you get your head round the signing mechanism its easy enough to add in these extra details.
Once you have got the hang of signing requests, it is just a case of requesting the appropriate endpoint for what you want using either curl or any other method that takes your fancy.
Hope this is of some use