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Facebook application changed, your action required to keep posting flights

Jan 5th, 2010
by openflights.

Recent changes inside Facebook have broken the existing OpenFlights Facebook application’s ability to  post recently added and/or today’s flights to your Facebook Wall.  To fix your copy, please go to this URL:

http://apps.facebook.com/openflights/

Right below “Step 1″, click on the link entitled “Grant permission to publish posts”, click on “Allow publishing” in the dialog that pops up, and then click one last time on “Update preferences”.  That’s it — and as a complimentary bonus, the flight map posted to your profile should now always be up to date.

Geek version: Effective today, Facebook has discontinued the old “template bundle” functionality, which used the offline_publish permission.  We’ve replaced it with stream publishing, but to work this requires the separate stream_publish permission instead.  In addition, we’re now calling fbml.refreshImgSrc after all profile changes to make sure the dynamically generated map is refreshed as well.

As always, the Facebook application code is available in the OpenFlights SVN, take a look if interested.  index.php is the core application, while updater.php is a standalone command line app that handles Wal updates.

Unbundled and streamlined,
-jani

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Posted in: Technical, Howto, Announcements.

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8 Comments on “Facebook application changed, your action required to keep posting flights”

  1. #1 Disinto
    on Jan 10th, 2010 at 11:29 pm

    Hi,
    The flight posting works fine, but the URI showed in the “View map” link is flawed. It links to “http://openflights/user/Disinto?ref=nf” for example.

  2. #2 openflights
    on Jan 12th, 2010 at 6:26 pm

    Thanks for the heads-up! This should be fixed now, but the fix will only apply to future updates, not ones that are already posted.

  3. #3 Disinto
    on Jan 18th, 2010 at 6:30 am

    Yes it works fine now, thanks for the fix!
    And BTW, would it be possible to implement a timezone feature for the notifications? I’m currently in the GMT+8 timezone and my last flight’s notification has been sent really late (like 8h after the actual flight).

    Thanks :)

  4. #4 openflights
    on Jan 18th, 2010 at 6:58 am

    That’s been on the unofficial To Do list for a while, but it’s now added to the official one:

    https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2934328&group_id=235620&atid=1097180

    It’s a little harder to implement than you’d think though, since while it’s very easy to check the day a flight leaves, working out the correct timezone requires a lookup through the airport database as well.

  5. #5 Disinto
    on Jan 19th, 2010 at 9:14 am

    Thanks for that! Looking forward to seeing this feature soon!

  6. #6 shainem
    on Jan 24th, 2010 at 10:38 pm

    i’m having an issue with the facebook app.

    i originally installed the FB app using my wife’s openflight info (it asked for OF username/password) and that worked great- the FB app displayed her OF stats exactly what I expected.

    however, i cannot get the app to update with a different OF account (i.e. mine)- it keeps reverting back to hers no matter what i do. I’ve tried removing the app from facebook, logging in/out of FB and OF, clearing cookies, etc. No matter what, whenever I go add the facebook app (logged into OF as me), my wife’s OF map & stats are loaded into FB. I can’t get back to the option to enter my OF username/password to authenticate and refresh the FB app.

    hope this makes sense. if not, i’m happy to elaborate further. if so, help!

    thanks!!

  7. #7 openflights
    on Jan 24th, 2010 at 10:41 pm

    Try this:

    http://apps.facebook.com/openflights/?reset=true

  8. #8 Yet another Facebook application issue – OpenFlights
    on Feb 1st, 2010 at 7:44 am

    […] only been a few weeks since we last pestered you, but it turns out our changes to the Facebook app weren’t quite enough, and that for a […]

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