Frankie

Frankie (facethesinatra.com) is a plugin for the Sinatra web framework (sinatrarb.com) that allows you to easily create a Facebook application by using the Facebooker gem.

Written by Ron Evans (www.deadprogrammersociety.com)

Based on merb_facebooker (github.com/vanpelt/merb_facebooker) by Chris Van Pelt, which was based on the Rails classes in Facebooker (facebooker.rubyforge.org/) by Mike Mangino, Shane Vitarana, & Chad Fowler

Thanks, everyone!

Here is a very simple example application:

        require 'rubygems'
        require 'frankie'

        configure do
          set_option :sessions, true
          load_facebook_config "./config/facebooker.yml", Sinatra.env
        end

        ## facebooker helpers
        before do
          ensure_authenticated_to_facebook
          ensure_application_is_installed_by_facebook_user
        end

        ## the site
        get '/' do
          body "<h1>Hello #{session[:facebook_session].user.name} and welcome to frankie!</h1>"
        end

How to use frankie

• Install the frankie gem (which will install both Sinatra and Facebooker if you do not already have them)

        sudo gem install frankie
  

• Create the application directories for your new app

        mkdir myapp
        cd myapp
        mkdir config
  

• Put your facebooker.yml file into the /myapp/config directory, and set the values to your information. Here is a simple example of the file:

        development:
         api_key: apikeyhere
         secret_key: secretkeyhere
         canvas_page_name: yourcanvashere
         callback_url: http://localhost:4567
        test:
         api_key: apikeyhere
         secret_key: secretkeyhere
         canvas_page_name: yourcanvashere
         callback_url: http://localhost:4567
        production:
         api_key: apikeyhere
         secret_key: secretkeyhere
         canvas_page_name: yourcanvashere
         callback_url: http://yourrealserver.com
  

• Make sure you have setup your Facebook application on the facebook site. Google "setup new facebook application" if you are unsure how to do this. I recommend starting with an IFrame application. A more advanced and cooler approach uses a tunneling script, which is included with Frankie. You do need to have "autossh" installed in order to use it, as well as a publicly addressable server. From a command prompt type tunnel <host> <remote_port> <local_port> like this:

        tunnel app.myhost.com 10000 4567
  

You will also need to make sure your server’s /etc/ssh/sshd_config contains the following line:

        GatewayPorts clientspecified

Thanks to the many people like Evan Weaver, Blake Mizerany, and whoever else that have provided the code used in this tunneling script.

• Create your application, based on the sample above, and then run it:

ruby sample.rb

• Test your app by going to apps.facebook.com/yourappname

Have fun!