What this book covers
Chapter 1, Introduction, gets you up to speed with Facebook and ready to learn to develop Flash applications that connect with the Facebook platform. You'll learn why it's worth putting more time into developing for Facebook than other social networks (and why it's likely to stay that way), and get yourself technically set up for coding.
Chapter 2, Welcome to the Graph, introduces you to Facebook's model for connecting all the information in its huge data stores the Graph API. You'll discover how intuitive this model is, and will start to explore the publicly available data using AS3 through utility code, which you'll build from scratch.
Chapter 3, Let Me In!, breaks down Facebook's systems for security, permissions, and authentication. You'll learn how to access the private data of Facebook users (including their photos, biographical information, and lists of friends). You will also start using the official Adobe ActionScript 3 SDK for Facebook platform alongside your own utility code.
Chapter 4, Digging Deeper into the Graph, helps you understand the concepts of paging and filtering, so that you aren't restricted to using only the default dataset that Facebook presents you with. You'll find out how to obtain data from specified dates, and how to speed up your applications by retrieving information from multiple sources at once.
Chapter 5, Search Me, builds on the previous chapter by teaching you how to search for data based on criteria other than dates. You'll learn how to retrieve Wall Posts by specific users, pages with specific names, and places by specific geographical coordinates.
Chapter 6, Adding to the Graph, takes you beyond merely retrieving data and into publishing new data to Facebook. You'll find out how to create new Wall Posts (including rich posts including images and embedded hyperlinks); how to comment on other users' Wall Posts; how to create new events, notes, and albums; and how to upload photos from your hard drive.
Chapter 7, FQL Matters, takes a break from the Graph API to teach you how to learn a powerful search tool—Facebook Query Language. You'll trade the Graph API's intuitiveness and simplicity for FQL's depth and additional features, while also understanding the benefits that each approach offers over the other.
Chapter 8, Finishing Off, wraps up what you've learned throughout the book and gets you ready to release your application to the wild. You'll find out how to embed your application into the Facebook website itself; how to get it into the official Facebook Application Directory; and how to export it as a desktop or Android application, while still keeping its Facebook connectivity. Finally, you'll learn how to keep up-to-date with the ever-changing Facebook platform, and discover some useful resources for taking what you've learned even further.
Appendix, Pop Quiz Answers, contains answers to all the Pop Quizzes in the book