Mastering Facebook application development, using PHP, RAD, was, and DB2, part 3rd

Complete the development of the Facebook stock broker Demo Application

Introduction: This is the last tutorial in the three-part series of a fully functional Facebook application that uses the PHP and Java™ languages to add a Facebook interface to an existing stock brokerage trading application. In this tutorial, you will use the tools and components you have installed in the first two sections to implement the details of your Facebook application.

Preliminary knowledge

This tutorial is intended for developers who have varying degrees of experience in Java and PHP, and who want to enter the evolving field of Facebook application development. It also targets developers who want to learn how to integrate PHP and Java into a single application.

About this series

This series will give you the skills to develop your own Facebook application and how to build on existing Java enterprise-class applications.

In part 1th, you initially learned about Facebook and installed the necessary tools, including IBM's Rational®application Developer development environment, the Zend Core for IBM® embedded Apache 2, and IBM's DB 2®express-c database, and IBM websphere®application Server. Then you have a detailed understanding of the Facebook Integration Essentials--facebook's mechanism for integrating applications into social networks-and starting some development of the quasi systems.

In part 2nd, you created a Java™web application project in IBM Rational application Developer, joined the Spring framework to apply the MVC architecture to the code, provided attribute/bean injection, and deployed the application To WebSphere.

Part 3rd will describe how to use Java and PHP to achieve full functionality using the Facebook Markup Language (Facebook Markup Language, FBML), Facebook JavaScript (FBJS), and the Facebook API Details of the Facebook application.

About this tutorial

In this tutorial, you will use all the tools you have installed and all the components you have developed to implement the specifics of your Facebook application. The application will include a main canvas page showing the user's stock portfolio (and other available stock), a profile box showing the stock ticker in the portfolio, the ability to buy and sell stocks on the canvas page, and the ability to recommend shares to friends on Facebook. You will use the Java and PHP Facebook client libraries to communicate with Facebook via the REST interface in PHP and Java controllers, using the open source version of Java client Libraries hosted on Google code, including the new companion Utility makes the connection to Facebook as simple as in PHP. You will use FBML to create Facebook content and, using FBJS and Facebook's AJAX interface, to update the portfolio's stock price and portfolio value in real time every second.

Necessary conditions

You should read part 1th before continuing with part 3rd: Installation Setup components and part 2nd: Using Java and PHP in parallel.

System Requirements

To complete the steps in this tutorial, you need these tools:

Spring Framework--I use the latest product version 2.5.3.

Rational Application developer--obtained RAD 7.0.0.6 beta from IBM (click Download using the new IBM installation Manager (recommended "link). You will use the Rational application Developer as the Eclipse-based IDE for the full features of developing Java Web applications.

IBM WebSphere Application Server V6.1

Zend Core for IBM (includes IBM DB2 express-c)

Zend Studio is an excellent tool for writing PHP code, although all text editors can write PHP code.

JSON JSP Tag Library

There is a facebook-java-api on Google Code that contains companion Utility.