Question

I’m getting confused trying to use the Facebook SDK. A few points where things are beyond my understanding are:

1. How does the Facebook SDK work in a larger sense (ie. work flow)?
2. What is the use of facebook.apk if it does not make any difference whether its installed on the device or not?

Any help as to links of blogs would be great!

Answer 1

Assuming you’ve already completed the Facebook SDK tutorial on native development with Android, I’d start with the following link that provides a 30 minute tutorial on adding Facebook integration to your Android application step by step.

As for the reason you’re installing the Facebook.apk, check out section 6.3 of the Facebook tutorial where it states:

Your app will still work without installing this image, but we will default to using Platform Dialogs for sign-in rather than using the Facebook App requiring user to sign-in every time you run your app in the emulator.

So, if you don’t install the Facebook.apk, your users would have to sign-in each and every time you run your application. Essentially, it provides additional functionality for you!

Hope that helps.