How do you limit the Facebook application to a small number of people during testing?

Question

I know about test accounts, but during beta testing, I would like to allow access only to my friends and then friends to friends, and then only ultimately to Kevin Bacon and his friends.

This is probably a suck, right? The application will be indicated (is there a way to prevent listing?), And someone I don’t know can try and get "sorry, this is a development message." I guess they will be annoyed and will not return.

From what I read, only a few applications take off, but when they take off, they REALLY take off. Did developers just bake these things completely?

Anyone get started with OpenSocial or other networks other than Facebook?

Any ideas for a soft, gradual, limited deployment?

Answer 1

Applications are displayed only in the Application Catalog if you submit them and they are accepted. There are no questions about preventing listing; this is what you should apply for.

Regarding user restriction, you can execute it using a script in an application that checks if the user who is currently logged into your limited user set is located. For example, if you only want friends, check if the current user supports your user ID. If not, just display the error / message page or redirect them to the Facebook homepage (or anywhere). Add this check so that the rest of the startup logic launches every page (for example, connecting to your database and authenticating with Facebook).

What I did in some cases was to store a database table with the user ID of users who are allowed access, essentially a "white list". If the user is not in the table, redirect them.

Answer 2

After you set up the application, there is an application on the application’s control panel for the developer: your application → Advanced → Sandbox mode.

The "Sandbox" mode allows you to restrict access only to those people who are indicated as developers (in the "Basic" section).

Regarding the expansion of the application, Facebook does not provide much more flexibility in Sandbox mode. Unfortunately, adding everyone as application developers does not work very well for the beta version, as people can access the application control panel when they are developers. I ended up adding a whitelist of Facebook IDs to the front controller of my application for the previous beta, and it worked pretty well.