Facebook connect displaying invite friends dialog and closing on completion

Question

I'm trying to create a Facebook Connect application that displays a friend invite dialog within the page using Facebook's Javascript API (through a FBMLPopupDialog).

The trouble is to display a friend invite dialog you use a multi-friend form which requires an action="url" attribute that represents the URL to redirect your page to when the user completes or skips the form. The problem is that I want to just close the FBMLPopupDialog (the same behavior as if the user just hit the 'X' button on the popup dialog). The best I can do is redirect the user back to the page they were on basically a reload but they lose all AJAX/Flash application state.

I'm wondering if any Facebook Connect developers have run into this issue and have a good way to simply display a friend invite "lightbox" dialog within their website where they don't want to "refresh" or "redirect" when the user finishes.

The facebook connect JS API provides a FB.Connect.inviteConnectUsers, which provides a nice dialog but only connects existing users of your application who also have a Facebook account and haven't connected.

http://bugs.developers.facebook.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4916

function fb_inviteFriends() {
                //Invite users
                log("Inviting users...");
        FB.Connect.requireSession( 
            function() { //Connect succes

                var uid = FB.Facebook.apiClient.get_session().uid;
                log('FB CONNECT SUCCESS: ' + uid);
                //Invite users
                log("Inviting users...");
                //Update server with connected account
                updateAccountFacebookUID();
                var fbml = fb_getInviteFBML() ;
                var dialog = new FB.UI. FBMLPopupDialog("Weblings Invite", fbml) ;
                //dialog.setFBMLContent(fbml);
                dialog.setContentWidth(650);
                dialog.setContentHeight(450);
                dialog.show();

            },
            //Connect cancelled
            function()  {
                //User cancelled the connect
                log("FB Connect cancelled:");    
            }
        );

} 

function fb_getInviteFBML() {
    var uid = FB.Facebook.apiClient.get_session().uid;
    var fbml = "";
    fbml = 
    '<fb:fbml>\n' +
        '<fb:request-form\n'+
                            //Redirect back to this page
                            ' action="'+ document.location +'"\n'+
                            ' method="POST"\n'+
                            ' invite="true"\n'+
                            ' type="Weblings Invite"\n' +
                            ' content="I need your help to discover all the Weblings and save the Internet! WebWars: Weblings is a cool new game where we can collect fantastic creatures while surfing our favorite websites. Come find the missing Weblings with me!'+ 
                            //Callback the server with the appropriate Webwars Account URL
                            ' <fb:req-choice url=\''+ WebwarsFB.WebwarsAccountServer +'/SplashPage.aspx?action=ref&reftype=Facebook' label=\'Check out WebWars: Weblings\' />"\n'+
                      '>\n'+
                       ' <fb:multi-friend-selector\n'+
                            ' rows="2"\n'+
                            ' cols="4"\n'+
                            ' bypass="Cancel"\n'+
                            ' showborder="false"\n'+
                            ' actiontext="Use this form to invite your friends to connect with WebWars: Weblings."/>\n'+
                ' </fb:request-form>'+
        ' </fb:fbml>';
    return fbml;
}

Answer 1

Just if someone will look for something like this in 2011, here is link: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/requests/ , and piece of code that you need to send application request is:

FB.ui({method: 'apprequests', message: 'A request especially for one person.', data: 'tracking information for the user'});

Answer 2

This is how I solved it

My JS/FBML (note the target="_self" attribute for the multi-friend-selector):

 var inviteDialog;    // Keep a reference for the popup dialog

 function makeInviteForm() {

  // Set up request form elements here

  var fbml = '';
  fbml += '<fb:fbml>';
  fbml += '   <fb:request-form type="' + requestType + '" content="' + requestContent + '" action="' + actionUrl + '" method="post" >';
  fbml += '       <fb:multi-friend-selector target="_self" exclude_ids="" max=' + maxFriends + ' cols="4" rows="3" showborder="false" actiontext="Invite friends!" />';
  fbml += '   </fb:request-form>';
  fbml += '</fb:fbml>';

  inviteDialog = new FB.UI.FBMLPopupDialog(title, fbml);

 }

My PHP:

 <?php
 // Do processing here
 ?>
 <script type="text/javascript">
 parent.inviteDialog.close();    // You could make this call a function that does additional processing if you want
 </script>