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Easy way to use Graph Facebook API without ad-hoc libraries (Ruby recipe) by Filippo Squillace
ActiveState Code (http://code.activestate.com/recipes/578343/)

I was painfully lokking for a simple function that allow easily make GET or POST requests in Ruby without using complex libraries such as Koala for accessing to the Facebook Graph. At the end I gave up and did it by myself, so the function fb_api, based on net/http, is able to make GET or POST requests (depending if the request is for retrieving information of the graph or is for changing the graph such as post feed etc.). It returns a dict from a JSON data structure.

This might be useful for your facebook app ;)

Ruby, 41 lines
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require 'net/https'


# Allows to make GET or POST requests to the facebook API graph
# the url parameter is the last part of the fb url excluding the https:/graph.facebook.com/
# It returns a dict from a JSON data structure.
#
# Note: You can also use open-uri for simple GET requests like this:
# obj = JSON.parse(open("https://graph.facebook.com/#{uid}?fields=id&access_token=#{access_token}").read)
# The problem is that in case
# of errors it raises a 400 HTTPBadRequest and it doesn't return any content of the body.
# Therefore, since the errors of a facebook request are inside the body of the response
# you couldn't get any fb errors from the simple function open.
def fb_api(url, access_token, attach = {}, request_type="GET")
  uri = URI("https://graph.facebook.com/#{url}")

  if request_type == "GET"
    uri.query = URI.encode_www_form(attach.merge('access_token' => access_token))
    req = Net::HTTP::Get.new uri.request_uri

  elsif request_type == "POST"
    req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri.path)
    req.set_form_data(attach.merge('access_token' => access_token))
  end


  res = Net::HTTP.new(uri.host, uri.port)
  res.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE
  res.use_ssl = true

  response = nil
  res.start do |http|
    response = http.request(req)
  end

  return JSON.parse(response.read_body)
end

def put_post_wall(profile_id, access_token, message, attach = {})
  fb_api("#{profile_id}/feed", access_token, attach.merge({'message'=>message}), request_type="POST")
end
Tags: api, facebook, http, ruby