Retrieve facebook friends & invite them to my iOS app

Question

I am developing an iOS application in which I want to retrieve my facebook friends & send it to server for checking who are already using this app using their email or phone number. Once I get friends who are not using my application then I will show "Invite" button to send an email to their email address with app store link to download the app.

But as per facebook permissions , we can not retrieve the facebook friends email address. Can anybody know how can I implement this feature in other way ? Any kind of help is appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

you can not retrieve facebook friends email address but you can post on their wall whatever link you want to post i.e. app store link to download the app.

Answer 2

You can give a look to my this thread.

Since facebook does not provide email address so the idea behind this solution to offer is that, you can send invite friend request with the link to your application at AppStore. I have briefly described the steps in link to follow in order to accomplish this case.

Invitation message might look like this:

I would like you to try XYZ game. Here is the link for this Application at AppStore: Facebook iOS SDK - get friends list

Answer 3

You can use FB Graph API(/me/invitable_friends) as below for getting non app friends -

// m_invitableFriends - global array which will hold the list of invitable friends

- (void) getAllInvitableFriends
{
    NSMutableArray *tempFriendsList =  [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    NSDictionary *limitParam = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:@"100", @"limit", nil];
    [self getAllInvitableFriendsFromFB:limitParam addInList:tempFriendsList];
}

- (void) getAllInvitableFriendsFromFB:(NSDictionary*)parameters
                            addInList:(NSMutableArray *)tempFriendsList
{
    [FBRequestConnection startWithGraphPath:@"/me/invitable_friends"
                                 parameters:parameters
                                 HTTPMethod:@"GET"
                          completionHandler:^(
                                              FBRequestConnection *connection,
                                              id result,
                                              NSError *error
                                              ) {
                              NSLog(@"error=%@",error);

                              NSLog(@"result=%@",result);

                              NSArray *friendArray = [result objectForKey:@"data"];

                              [tempFriendsList addObjectsFromArray:friendArray];

                              NSDictionary *paging = [result objectForKey:@"paging"];
                              NSString *next = nil;
                              next = [paging objectForKey:@"next"];
                              if(next != nil)
                              {
                                  NSDictionary *cursor = [paging objectForKey:@"cursors"];
                                  NSString *after = [cursor objectForKey:@"after"];
                                  //NSString *before = [cursor objectForKey:@"before"];
                                  NSDictionary *limitParam = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                                                              @"100", @"limit", after, @"after"
                                                              , nil
                                                              ];
                                  [self getAllInvitableFriendsFromFB:limitParam addInList:tempFriendsList];
                              }
                              else
                              {
                                  [self replaceGlobalListWithRecentData:tempFriendsList];
                              }
                          }];
}

- (void) replaceGlobalListWithRecentData:(NSMutableArray *)tempFriendsList
{
    // replace global from received list
    [m_invitableFriends removeAllObjects];
    [m_invitableFriends addObjectsFromArray:tempFriendsList];
    //NSLog(@"friendsList = %d", [m_invitableFriends count]);
    [tempFriendsList release];
}

For Inviting non app friend -

you will get invite tokens with the list of friends returned by me/invitable_friends graph api. You can use these invite tokens with FBWebDialogs to send invite to friends as below

- (void) openFacebookFeedDialogForFriend:(NSString *)userInviteTokens {

    NSMutableDictionary *params = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
                                   userInviteTokens, @"to",
                                   nil, @"object_id",
                                   @"send", @"action_type",
                                   actionLinksStr, @"actions",
                                   nil];

    [FBWebDialogs
     presentRequestsDialogModallyWithSession:nil
     message:@"Hi friend, I am playing game. Come and play this awesome game with me."
     title:nil
     parameters:params
     handler:^(
               FBWebDialogResult result,
               NSURL *url,
               NSError *error)
     {
         if (error) {
             // Error launching the dialog or sending the request.
             NSLog(@"Error sending request : %@", error.description);
         }
         else
         {
             if (result == FBWebDialogResultDialogNotCompleted)
             {
                 // User clicked the "x" icon
                 NSLog(@"User canceled request.");
                 NSLog(@"Friend post dialog not complete, error: %@", error.description);
             }
             else
             {
                 NSDictionary *resultParams = [g_mainApp->m_appDelegate parseURLParams:[url query]];

                 if (![resultParams valueForKey:@"request"])
                 {
                     // User clicked the Cancel button
                     NSLog(@"User canceled request.");
                 }
                 else
                 {
                     NSString *requestID = [resultParams valueForKey:@"request"];

                     // here you will get the fb id of the friend you invited,
                     // you can use this id to reward the sender when receiver accepts the request

                     NSLog(@"Feed post ID: %@", requestID);
                     NSLog(@"Friend post dialog complete: %@", url);
                 }
             }
         }
     }];
}