How do facebook applications work?

Question

Hi,

Here's a little bit about my situation:
I want to be able to retrieve a list of emails for the friends of a given user.

Here is how I would like the process to go:

1. A div box pops up with a login (used to log in to their facebook account, not my website's account system - that is separate)
2. Then once the user has entered their facebook credentials, they will have a button appear.
   • Send email to all friends.

If they click on this button I would like an email sent out to all of that user's friends.

Questions:
I only want to pull out emails from a user's friends, so...

1) Is it actually a facebook app that I'm creating?

Many of the tutorials talk about facebook apps and how you have to go to facebook and create an app from there and set all of these settings for page redirects and such. I didn't think I wanted it to be an app, all I want is the information.

2) If I do need it to be an app, how is it supposed to interact with my website? Some talk about iframes, or other methods... How am I supposed to know which to use and how I can integrate it into my site?

Answer 1

You have to create app through facebook, but it's only for autorization information.

• api key
• api secret

And you have to few options for working with facebook API from C#

• Facebook Developer Toolkit
• .NET Facebook API Client
• Facebook.NET

Answer 2

Let me add to that the PHP API:

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/PHP

http://developers.facebook.com/get_started.php

Answer 3

There are no API methods to get anyone's e-mail addresses on Facebook, and neither are there on OpenSocial. This is so that the e-mail addresses do not end up on spam lists. There is a way to send e-mail without getting to know the actual addresses though. If you get the user to accept extended privileges for your app, then you can send e-mail at some reasonable intervals to that specific user.

Answer 4

Bemmu is correct = you can't use facebook to get email addresses.

You can send a facebook messages (which usually sends an email to the recipient as well depending on the users preferences).

You'll need to build a facebook app, and get users to allow it to access their profile information (default request). Then you'll be able to sendNotification to receipientID's.

Start with http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Notifications.send and look at other references to the Stream API.

Do read the guidelines and agreements - there's rules on how long you can hold onto stream data and what you can use it for.