Ultimately I want to create a desktop app that allows users to update their own status, view status’ of their friends, update pics etc. – basically a lot of the functionality the facebook website provides. Through looking through some tutorials and sample projects it seems that an app must be created for the facebook account. Now is this the facebook account of the developer (i.e. mine) – which will provide an API key that will allow any other user to log in?? Does every desktop project need to authenticate the user through a facebook dialog window to take the users’ credentials?? Where does OAuth fit into this?? If anyone can shed any light as to the structure of the facebook api and the ways in which I can grant this functionality from say a WPF C# app for example I would really appreciate it.
EDIT: Before complaints of a potentially huge question or too ‘vague’, my question is specific to the integration/use of the facebook API in desktop applications – not how to then retrieve status feeds etc. I’ll work that out myself.
Per Facebook documentation, all desktop apps will need to implement some form of web browser integration, whether embedded within the desktop app or controlled.
See: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/
Don’t worry it took me two solid days of trial and error and re-re-reading of the documentation on authentication to finally “get” it.