Flash and Facebook Platform mobile applications

Flash and Facebook mobile applications are like desktop applications; the application lives on the user's device after the user installs the application and login is handled solely by the Adobe ActionScript 3 SDK for Facebook Platform. On Android and Blackberry Tablet OS devices, the application is deployed as an AIR application (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. A Flash and Facebook Platform mobile AIR application on Android and Blackberry Tablet OS devices

1. The user installs and opens your mobile application. The application uses the Adobe ActionScript 3 SDK for Facebook Platform code to check and see if there is a current access token for this user and application. If there is not, it presents a Facebook login or authorization screen.
2. The ActionScript code in your SWF file makes asynchronous calls directly to Facebook using the Adobe ActionScript 3 SDK for Facebook Platform. The access token is automatically passed with each API call.
3. Facebook returns JSON-formatted data to your application and your application handles the data.
4. If you want to save any data on your server or do any other server-side processing, your ActionScript code can make calls to your server using typical remote procedure call methods (HTTP, web service, and Flash Remoting requests).
5. If the server needs to talk to Facebook for any reason, it does.
6. Your server handles results from Facebook.
7. Your server returns any data to the Flash Platform desktop application.

For deployment on iOS devices, the AIR application must be converted to a native iOS application using Flash Builder 4.5 or later or Flash Professional CS5 or later and then deployed (see Figure 6).