in Libraries/Info Sci, Tech

Facebook application – a first try

Over the last couple days I’ve cobbled together a Facebook application that searches the UAH book catalog:

http://apps.facebook.com/uahcatalog/

You can add it to your profile here. To give credit where it’s due, this is very heavily based on the code from UIUC’s similar application.

Having code to work from, the process was pretty straightforward. I did hit some speed bumps though. The largest was that once finished, the app didn’t show up on anybody else’s profile once added. It was fine on mine, but not on anybody else’s! I’m still not entirely sure how I fixed that one, but it seems to be working now.

I also ran across one issue that really bugs me: Facebook’s cache refresh time. They appear to be caching my application, so the recent design changes I made won’t show up yet. This cache seems to last an inordinately long time (more than 24 hours), especially when the app is in active development like mine is. I’d like to see changes reflected immediately to make sure I haven’t broken anything. A method to force a refresh would be much appreciated. (Maybe such a thing exists already, but I couldn’t find any mention of it in the developers’ forums)

As it is, once you add this to your profile the app will look rather suspiciously like UIUC’s for the time being… until the cache refreshes and my aesthetic design changes kick in.

This is just an early early application, but I wanted to see what is possible. Learning a new API is never simple, and I am barely scratching the surface here.