Massive API/Framework mashup issue (oAuth, Facebook, Twitter, Code Igniter)

Question

Hi all,

I'm having (many, but for now,) one problem with a project I'm working on.

1. It is a PHP project run on Code Igniter
2. It is a Facebook app that wants to use oAuth Twitter authorization

CodeIgniter by default clears the $_GET array because it uses the URI for controlling MVC stuff. You can turn this off to access the GET array, and use a string like example.com/?c=MyController&m=MyMethod to get around this.

Facebook asks you to define a root url for you application page. This means that for me:

apps.facebook.com/MyApplication == http://www.myownserver.com/index.php/c=SignIn&

I have it set up this way so that it can use the $_GET array. When Twitter (and I assume any other implementation) uses oAuth, it passes back to whatever URL you want with the ?token=250937602736037609273609327 appended onto the end, so I end up at

app.facebook.com/MyApplication/?token=302870637602746094276097

which looks right, but is in fact equivalent to

http://www.myownserver.com/index.php/c=SignIn&?token=302870637602746094276097

So the problem is that you can't have two question marks in the URL; the second needs to be an ampersand (&) to string more values together. The error message is a predictable Disallowed Key Characters.

Can anyone thing of a good/clever way to get around this issue I'm having? I really don't want to dump the CodeIgniter part of this setup because it has a great DB abstraction and good helpers that I've already written a good bit of code on.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

Hm. Can you do something clever with mod_rewrite and the QSA flag to automatically string it together, perhaps? I.e. have a rewrite for your 'root url' instead of tacking the ampersand onto it in facebook?

Answer 2

Perhaps I don't fully understand your problem, but can't you add & to $config['permitted_uri_chars'] in the application/config/config.php file?

Answer 3

You can extend the Input Library to allow query strings and pretty urls.

Check out haughin.com for the Twitter Library, and see how he did it.

Answer 4

hello,

there is a twitter codeigniter library on http://newdailyblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/download-tweetsigniter.html. Thanks.