Question

I am building a website that uses the php facebook libraries. At the beginning of every page I am checking to see if the user is logged into facebook or not (or trying to) with the $facebook->getLoginStatusUrl($params) function. The issue I have is that the only real way to check with that function is to have the user redirected to a page based on their statues (by directing them to the url given back by that function). I cant use file_get_contents or cURL because the URL returned by that function uses https. Is their anyway I can get the contents of that URL with a server-side method? Or is the absolute only way to do this with a redirect? I would much prefer not to make this a client side action (via Javascript). Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can use the facebook getUser() function to check if the user is logged and has given permisssions to your web. After that you can use getLoginUrl() or getLogoutUrl() to show the user the right button:

$user = $facebook->getUser();    

if (!$user)
{
  $loginUrl = $facebook->getLoginUrl(array(
    'redirect_uri' => REDIRECT_URL,
    'scope' => APP_PERMS,
    'display' => 'page'
  ));

  //do something with $loginUrl, for example:
  echo '<a href="'.$loginUrl.'">Login with facebook</a>';
}
else
{
  //check that this user is still valid
  $realUser = $facebook->api('me');

...

You can learn more about this functions in facebook docs:

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/php/