Facebook Connect, understanding how it works.

[kratsg]

So, I've been dabbling around with the Facebook API and such, and I've got Facebook Connect set up on a site (with sample code) working perfectly (after fixing all the bugs).

 

So, what confuses me are some basic parts of it, such as how it can log-in, be authenticated, link user accounts, and such. The documentation provided by Facebook are all user-submitted and are slightly confusing in how it works (as they don't show code examples, rather than just lecture about it).

 

What's even more confusing is that you can only link accounts in one-direction, meaning:

 

Let's say a user registers on your site. Easily done, using your own user management scripts. Next, they have the option of linking this account with the one on Facebook, so a line of code is entered with the FacebookID and the email hash (I assume, not sure how the account knows that Facebook is linked with it).

 

Everytime you log on the account you registered with on the site, Facebook auto-inserts all those basic information about you, name, etc... to the site in place of the ones you registered the account with.

 

Now, let's say you logged in the site simply by using Facebook connect, it will literally become it's own account, and shows no signs of being linked to that account you already registered on the site. Meaning, anything you do on a Facebook Connected log-in will only remain with the Facebook Connected Log-in, yet if you log in with the user-registered account, anything you do with it stays with the account (regardless of whether you link or unlink facebook with the account).

 

It's very confusing E_E Maybe someone could make a tutorial explaining how it all works? :-D (Most other sites have similar structures going on with their APIs like MySpace, YouTube, etc...)