Validating a Facebook Session Within an iFrame
Facebook takes security seriously and there are many many things a Facebook app cannot do. Sometimes it is necessary to create an iFrame and load the page in to work around Facebook’s security model. This example shows how you can continue to use the $facebook->require_login() method while you are inside an iFrame.
Each Facebook request to your application contains a number of parameters that you can use to authenticate if the request really came from Facebook and if the user is actually logged in. These parameters looks like this:
Array
(
[fb_sig_in_canvas] => 1
[fb_sig_request_method] => GET
[fb_sig_friends] => 12345678,123456789,...
[fb_sig_locale] => en_US
[fb_sig_in_new_facebook] => 1
[fb_sig_time] => 1265247656.6432
[fb_sig_added] => 1
[fb_sig_profile_update_time] => 1261813927
[fb_sig_expires] => 1265248900
[fb_sig_user] => 1234567
[fb_sig_session_key] => 2.18zPq2sNPEE6sn0wpMLc5w__.3600.1265248800-1234567
[fb_sig_api_key] => ab6c2d2604ae9604be0efef88315c53e
[fb_sig_app_id] => 289424642699
[fb_sig] => 575ed0ccd0c9b3ea2d5d7c5417187de6
)
If you create an iFrame in your facebook page, the parameters will be passed to the iFrame but by will not automatically be passed from one request to the next. Once the user clicks on a link or you try to do an ajax request, you will not be able to validate the user. The simple trick to keep the authorization is to pass the fb_sig_* parameters to request. A handy PHP function like this will help:
function fb_vars()
{
$fb_vars = array();
foreach ($_GET as $key => $value)
{
if (strpos($key, "fb_sig") !== false)
{
$fb_vars[] = $key."=".$value;
}
}
return implode('&', $fb_vars);
}
If you append the result of that function to the query string of each request, the $facebook->require_login() call and the $facebook->validate_fb_params() can then successfully validate if your user is from Facebook.