Running Facebook application on localhost

Question

I am planning to connect to Facebook chat from my localhost. I will need to get the session key from Facebook. When I give the site URL as localhost:8080 or ip-address:8080 it does not work.

I read about setting up two apps with 2 different API keys one runs on dev m/c and other on localhost but I did not quite get it.

Can anyone explain how to run a Facebook app on localhost?

Answer 1

I wrote a tutorial about this a while ago.

The most important point is the "Site URL":

Site URL: http://localhost/app_name/

Where the folder structure is something like:

app_name
¦   index.php
¦
+---canvas
¦   ¦   index.php
¦   ¦
¦   +---css
¦           main.css
¦           reset.css
¦
+---src
        facebook.php
        fb_ca_chain_bundle.crt

EDIT:
Kavya: how does the FB server recognize my localhost even without an IP or port??

I don't think this has anything to do with Facebook, I guess since the iframe src parameter is loaded from client-side it'll treat your local URL as if you put it directly on your browser.

For example have a file on your online server with content (e.g. online.php):

<iframe src="http://localhost/test.php" width="100%" height="100%">
    <p>Not supported!</p>
</iframe>

And on your localhost root directory, have the file test.php:

<?php echo "Hello from Localhost!"; ?>

Now visit http://your_domain.com/online.php you will see your localhost file's content!

This is why realtime subscriptions and deauthorize callbacks (just to mention) won't work with localhost URLs! because Facebook will ping (send http requests) to these URLs but obviously Facebook server won't translate those URLs to yours!

Answer 2

if you use localhost:

in Facebook-->Settings-->Basic, in field "App Domains" write "localhost", then click to "+Add Platform" choose "Web Site",

it will create two fields "Mobile Site URL" and "Site URL", in "Site URL" write again "localhost".

works for me.

Answer 3

You can also edit 'hosts' file and create local variation of your domain.

Example

If your real facebook application address is "example.com" you can create "localhost.example.com" (accessible only from your pc) domain in your "hosts" file pointing to "localhost" and run your local website under this domain. You can trick Facebook this way.

Answer 4

In your app's basic settings (https://developers.facebook.com/apps) under Settings->Basic->Select how your app integrates with Facebook...

Use "Site URL:" and "Mobile Site URL:" to hold your production and development URLs. Both sites will be allowed to authenticate. I'm just using Facebook for authentication so I don't need any of the mobile site redirection features. I usually change the "Mobile Site URL:" to my "localhost:12345" site while I'm testing the authentication, and then set it back to normal when I'm done.

Answer 5

2013 August. Facebook doesn't allow to set domain with port for an App, as example "localhost:3000".

So you can use https://pagekite.net to tunnel your localhost:port to proper domain.

Rails developers can use http://progrium.com/localtunnel/ for free.

• Facebook allows only one domain for App at the time. If you are trying to add another one, as localhost, it will show some kind of different error about domain. Be sure to use only one domain for callback and for app domain setting at the time.

Answer 6

So I got this to work today. My URL is http://localhost:8888. The domain I gave facebook is localhost. I thought that it was not working because I was trying to pull data using the FB.api method. I kept on getting an "undefined" name and an image without a source, so definitely didn't have access to the Graph.

Later I realized that my problem was really that I was only passing a first argument of /me to FB.api, and I didn't have a token. So you'll need to use the FB.getLoginStatus function to get a token, which should be added to the /me argument.

Answer 7

just specify your canvas url as http://localhost/app_path.

Answer 8

Ok I'm not sure what's up with these answers but I'll let you know what worked for me as advised by a senior dev at my work. I'm working in Ruby on Rails and using Facebook's JavaScript code to get access tokens.

Problem: To do authentication, Facebook is taking the url from your address bar and comparing that with what they have on file. They don't allow you to use localhost:3000 for whatever reason. However, you can use a completely made-up domain name like yoursite.dev by running a local server and pointing yoursite.dev to 127.0.0.1:3000 or wherever your localhost was pointing to.

Step 1: Install or update Nginx

$ brew install nginx (install) or $ brew upgrade nginx (update)

Step 2: Open up your nginx config file

/usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf (usually here)

/opt/boxen/config/nginx/nginx.conf(if you use Boxen)

Step 3 Add this bit of code into your http {} block

Replace proxy_pass with wherever you want to point yoursite.dev to. In my case it was replacing localhost:3000 or the equivalent 127.0.0.1:3000

server {
  listen       yoursite.dev:80;
  server_name  yoursite.dev;
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
  }
}

Step 4: Edit your hosts file, in /etc/hosts on Mac to include

127.0.0.1   yoursite.dev

This file directs domains to localhost. Nginx listens in on localhost and redirects if it matches a rule.

Step 5: Every time you use your dev environment going forward, you use the yoursite.dev in the address bar instead of localhost:3000 so Facebook logs you in correctly.

Answer 9

Forward is a great tool for helping with development of facebook apps locally, it supports SSL so the cert thing isn't a problem.

https://forwardhq.com/in-use/facebook

DISCLAIMER: I'm one of the devs

Answer 10

You need to setup your app to run over https for localhost

You can follow steps given in this to setup HTTPS on ubuntu

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-create-a-ssl-certificate-on-apache-for-ubuntu-12-04

You need to do following steps:

install apache (if you do not have)

sudo apt-get install apache2

Step One—Activate the SSL Module

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo service apache2 restart

Step Two—Create a New Directory

sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl

Step Three—Create a Self Signed SSL Certificate

sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/apache/ssl/apache.key -out /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.crt

With this command, we will be both creating the self-signed SSL certificate and the server key that protects it, and placing both of them into the new directory. The most important line is "Common Name". Enter your official domain name here or, if you don't have one yet, your site's IP address.

Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:example.com or localhost

Step Four—Set Up the Certificate

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/default-ssl

Find following lines and edit those with your settings

ServerName localhost or example.com

SSLEngine on SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.crt

SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.key

Step Five—Activate the New Virtual Host

sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo service apache2 reload

Answer 11

A trick:

Use MAMPPRO and create: server name: the EXACT adress of you website (eg: helloworld.com) to your site on your disk

On Facebook: So you can keep your original Site URL as well (eg: helloworld.com)

Now you understand that when you type your website on the adress bar you are in local! ..and when you want to be online, just inactive the server on MAMP PRO..

:)

Answer 12

None of the answers above worked for me. I am running on FB API 2.5. Mine was a combination of issues that lead to success once resolved

1. Create a test app to ensure that it is maintained and managed as such and can be disabled when going live
2. Read the error message properly :) - I had to enable "Web OAuth Login" WITH "Client OAuth Login"
3. Use https://www.whatismyip.com/ to find out what my current IP is
4. Create an A record on my Domain i.e. http://localhost.mydomain.com that points to my current IP

It's probably not ideal as Dynamic IP's change and one could probably use DynDNS or something similar to make the IP more "static" but it worked for me

Answer 13

In my case the issue revealed to be chrome blocking the CORS request from localhost:4200 to facebook api website. Running Chrome with this setting: "YOUR_PATH_TO_CHROME\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-web-security --user-data-dir="c:/chrome worked like a charm while developing. Even with no localhost added to facebook app's settings.