Question

There is so much documentation on facebook apps, both through the official docs and through discussions, however I still cannot find a solid answer to this.

I have a facebook tab app that should have 3 pages: a landing page that requires no authorization, an interior page that does require authorization, and a final page that displays the results of what happened on page 2 (also requires authorization).

My plan was to simply POST data between each page and dynamically include files based on a variable. The problem, however, is that I lose my signed_request after POSTing. Should I just use 100% AJAX to load new pages and post back to the server? Thanks.

Answer 1

When user loads your canvas url: https://apps.facebook.com/your_app, in both case you’ll get signed_request by authorized user and non-authorized user.

But if user auhtorized signed_request will included user’s facebook id and access token to query on graph api.

By using facebook javascript api, you’ll get cookies including signed_request.

For the first page load, by signed_request you recognized the user.

For successive calls you use cookie

For your case:

Landing page: you got signed_request “anonymous”
Page 2:

Either you can ask authorization by javascript methods then you got cookies
for successive pages you can do whatever you want

Or you can redirect to authorization page and at the returning you got signed_request including users info and access token, for next page either you pass it by http param or by cookie written by you or by cookie written by facebook javascript sdk
.

Note: sorry for long answer :/