Should Android apps with a server side component access Facebook directly?

Question

If I am building an Android app that uses the Facebook SDK and also has a web app that has most of the same functionality, how should the Android app handle social actions? Should it directly make requests to the Facebook API through the SDK or should it post to the web app server through my own API and allow the web-app to make the request to Facebook on behalf of the Android app? Most of the Facebook for Android examples use the former approach however none explicitly discuss the best practice when there is a web backend that will have the same social functionality as the Android app.

Answer 1

I've been putting my mind into a similar problem before. It was a PHP app, but essentially the design choice was to either put the FB-interaction into the frontend (JS-SDK) or into the backend and proxy it (PHP-SDK). Sadly haven't found much guidance either, so I had to make up my own mind.

As so often there seems no per-se answer, it depends on what you are doing with FB and how deep it is integrated into whatever your app/webapp/backend are doing. Is your Android otherwise more a client-side app or does it rely on other features delivered by the web-app via web-service? Is it somehow integrated with users actions that are dispatched to the backend, or does it just offer some additional gimmicks (e.g. 'Like' button, anything in the lines) Are you using the SDK to authenticate and pull user related data from FB (email, name) and does that information play a role in your backend?

As I see it, it boils down to the following:

Direct communication with FB is a lot simpler to implement as you won't have an additional layer between your app and FB, i.e. proxy code, etc. So if FB is just loosely coupled it's likely the 'good-enough' option.

Patching FB from frontend to backend can get nasty - especially if you want to authenticate via FB it's kinda complex at first. However, you'll have all FB logic in a single place, shared by Android-App and Webapp, so it's obviously easier to maintain later and better to integrate with other interactions your backend might be offering.

Hope that provides some value, would be eager to see other opinions too.

Answer 2

Well I think both approaches are correct but the choice depends on mostly what you already have in place on the server side and if you are planing to use the same functionality from different apps like (Android,iOS, Windows Phone apps). In that case it makes sense to just get user token with permissions you require on the front end and let the web server talk to facebook using that token. You could even save this token for the user so they don't have to give permissions again if for example you have web registration and app registration. In our app we are using this approach since there are basically five front ends (Android,iOS, Desktop,Mobile Web,Full Web) this way application developers just get token using sdk on there platform (you have to use tokens and not user name, password because of facebook rules for security). On the other hand if all Facebook communication is used only inside your app and the server doesn't need to know much about it put api calls in the app.

Answer 3

In my opinion, it is best to use the available SDKs/APIs for each given platform instead of trying to write your own centralization and use a single library. Since you are specifically interested in how the Android app should handle social interactions, I suggest using the Facebook SDK for Android.

While it does increase the size of the code you must maintain and the SDKs/APIs you must learn as your list of platforms increases, the most important factor for this approach is the user experience. By sticking with the native libraries, and growing your app as those libraries evolve, you will be providing your users with an experience that they are most likely to be used to. They won't have to learn how to use your app, but will be able to make posts, update their status, and look at their friend list using controls that they are accustomed to using. Additionally, you will be able to take advantage of specific platform functionality (in the mobile case, such as having your app post to a users feed in a way that promotes your app: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/tutorials/androidsdk/3.0/games/feed/)