[ phpBB - phpBB3 - Facebook - MOD - Tutorial ]
Note
As of phpBB 3.5, this procedure is DEPRECATED, instead configure the native OAuth mechanism in phpBB administration (user interactions will be pretty the same).
Introduction
This short tutorial will explain how to configure and install the phpBB3 Facebook Connect MOD.
At the beginning, I just made this MOD as a working proof-of-concept for making a Facebook Authentication plugin on phpBB (you can do it for anything you want: Twitter, OpenID, etc), using the Authentication Layer facilities provided by phpBB API.
But nobody took that work to do a REAL Facebook Connect MOD (ie including users registration), and users wanted more a full working MOD than a how-to-implement tutorial. Okay, okay, as you want...
So, you will find below an updated version of the original tutorial, and an updated version (compatible with Facebook Graph API and new Facebook PHP SDK) of the code provided on the previous tutorial. As people seemed to dislike it, I will talk less in this tutorial, and limit it to the basis to install the MOD. The code provided with this tutorial is widely commented, and is also as simple and basic as possible, you should be able to understand it and make the changes you want.
However, if you are interested in this MOD, don't hesitate to ask any question about it on the Forum. You can ask me in french or in english.
At the end of the tutorial, you will find references and documentations that could help you modify and improve this MOD.
IMPORTANT: This MOD does not provide (yet) users registration facilities for the phpBB forum, the user must have an account on the forum to link his forum account with his Facebook account.
Abstract
This MOD is made around the authentication plugin, wich does the most of this MOD job.
To install this plugin, you need:
- To alter the phpBB users database, to add a column to store the user Facebook ID.
- To register an application on the Facebook Developers Application, so that Facebook can give you access tokens.
- Copy the files on your forum, and edit the configuration file to add your application's API key and secret.
- Edit your templates files if you wish to have a pretty "Login with Facebook" button.
The user authentication follows this flowchart:
- The user authenticates on your forum, and request Facebook linking
- The user log into Facebook, and link his account with the file
facebook_linking.php. - The user can unset the link by using
facebook_unlinking.php, without being connected to Facebook (but must be logged in on the forum). - Once his account is linked, he does not need a password on the forum anymore, he simply log in with
facebook_login.php. If the user is logged on Facebook, he will be logged automagically on the forum by accessing this file. - The classic phpBB disconnect could be enough, but a
facebook_logout.phpis available to clear every possible Facebook cookies.
Note: If you want to move these files, don't forget to fix the $phpbb_root_path, otherwise the files could not include API key files and Facebook SDK !
Installation
Get the files
Download the files associated with this tutorial here, and unzip the tarball.
Make the Facebook Application
Here we are, now we have to register our aplication on Facebook, go on the Facebook Developers Application and create an aplication.
Follow the steps, and give your application a name. It could be your website name or whatever, this is what will be shown to the user when he asks for Facebook Connect for the first time on your website.
Great ! We are almost done, you can get the Facebook API ID and secret showed at the top of this capture, keep it for later.
Don't forget to expand the "Website" section to add your forum URL and domain.
Edit config.php
Once you have the API key and secret, you can edit the file includes/facebook/config.php to add these informations.
Alter the phpBB users database
Execute the following query on your database in order to create the column in the phpBB users table. You have to adapt it to your tables schema, if your tables' prefix is not phpbb_.
ALTER TABLE `phpbb_users` ADD `facebook_id` BIGINT( 20 ); ALTER TABLE `phpbb_users` ADD UNIQUE (`facebook_id` );
Copy the files on your server
You are done ! Copy the files on your server, merging the existing directories. You should not overwrite anything, because every file is a new file.
The user should be able to link his Facebook account with facebook/facebook_linking.php and log in with facebook/facebook_login.php.
Templates considerations
TODO...
