Could it be? An official C-Sharp .NET SDK from Facebook itself? Yes! What’s the catch? Well… it isn’t much yet, and came out of a hackathon project (is that what it takes for Facebook people to acknowledge Microsoft .NET as a real language?)… but it is hope. Here it is the news directly from the Facebook Developer blog post:
We’re excited to announce the Facebook C# SDK alpha release. This is our first official C# SDK, built to meet the needs of the significant community of Facebook developers using C#.
The SDK has a number of features. It:
- Works with both Web (ASP.NET) and desktop applications.
- Uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication.
- Supports a convenient way of making calls to the new Graph API using the OAuth 2.0 access token.
The C# SDK adheres to the elegantly simple design philosophy of all our new SDKs. It also includes a small example program to help you get started.
You can download the open source Facebook C# SDK from GitHub today. Please submit your feedback and report any issues you might encounter with this alpha version code. We can’t wait to see what you build with it.
Andrey, a Facebook engineer, built this SDK as a Hackathon project.
Again, I can only HOPE that this will be maintained a pace similar to their PHP SDK and a better pace than the ever “two-steps behind” Facebook Developer Toolkit (by Microsoft / Clarity Consulting Inc). This is only a light-wrapper and seems only to include functionality for using the Graph API with OAuth 2.0. It seems that for other implementations like FBML controls, old REST API calls and such (at least right now) you’re going to have to stick with what is currently available (eg. Facebook Developer Toolkit).
SIDE NOTE: A couple months back, right after Facebook announced the Graph API, I had come across a new CodePlex project which looked promising. The Facebook Graph Toolkit seemed like it would be the project to use. But now it is mid-july and still only an Alpha (Preview 4) release is out.
While there is much left to be done, hopefully this will end the hunt for “the” Facebook .NET SDK . (Did I mention I am hoping?)