Facebook development in localhost

Question

Just wanted to know if there is any way I could develop Facebook applications in localhost.

Answer 1

My Solution works fine in localhost..... For Site URLS use http://localhost/ and for App domains use localhost/folder_name Rest everything is same .......it works fine (though its shows redflag in App Domain..App is working fine)

Answer 2

Don't have enough cred to comment on the top voted answer, but at least in my rails environment (running 4), rails s is at http://localhost:3000, not http://www.localhost:3000. When I changed it to http://localhost:3000, it worked just fine. No need to edit any hosts file.

Answer 3

Edit: 2-15-2012 This is how to use FB authentication for a localhost website.

I find it more scalable and convenient to set up a second Facebook app. If I'm building MyApp, then I'll make a second one called MyApp-dev.

• Create a new app at https://developers.facebook.com/apps
• (New 2/15/2012) Click the Website checkbox under 'Select how your application integrates with Facebook' (In the recent Facebook version you can find this under Settings > Basic > Add Platform - Then select website)
• Set the Site URL field (NOT the App Domains field) to http://www.localhost:3000 (this address is for Ruby on Rails, change as needed)

• In your application initializer, put in code to detect the environment
  • Sample Rails 3 code

    if Rails.env == 'development' || Rails.env == 'test'
      Rails.application.config.middleware.use OmniAuth::Builder do
        provider :facebook, 'DEV_APP_ID', 'DEV_APP_SECRET'
      end
    else
      # Production
      Rails.application.config.middleware.use OmniAuth::Builder do
        provider :facebook, 'PRODUCTION_APP_ID', 'PRODUCTION_APP_SECRET'
      end
    end
    

I prefer this method because once it's set up, coworkers and other machines don't have additional setup.

Answer 4

NOTE: As of 2012 Facebook allows registration of "localhost" as return Url. You still may need similar workaround for other providers (i.e. Microsoft one).

If you need real domain name registered with Facebook (like my.really.own.domain.com) you can locally redirect requests to this domain to your machine. Easiest out of box approach on any OS is to change "hosts" file to map the domain to 127.0.0.1 (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727005.aspx#EDAA and https://serverfault.com/questions/118290/cname-record-alias-in-windows-hosts-file).

I usually use Fiddler to do it for me (on Windows with local IIS) - see samples on http://www.fiddler2.com/Fiddler/Dev/ScriptSamples.asp.

if (oSession.HostnameIs("my.really.own.domain.com")) {
   oSession.host="localhost:80";
}

Hosts file approach of approaches does not work with Visual Studio Development Server as it requires incoming Urls to be localhost/127.0.0.1. If you need to work with it (or possibly with IIS express) to override host - Using Fiddler with IIS7 Express

Answer 5

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 respectively. 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 6

You have to choose Facebook product 'facebook login' and enable Client OAuth Login , 'Web OAuth Login' and 'Embedded Browser OAuth Login' then even if you give localhost url It will work