When should the server-side vs. client-side Facebook authentication flows be used?

Question

Facebook has two flows for Authentication, client-side and server-side. When should each one be used?

Facebook docs: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/

Answer 1

Depending on your needs you can use one or the other or both. If you want calls to facebook to be processed before the user sees a certain page then use server side... however if you want to display partial information until the user has authenticated, use javascript authentication.

It boils down to this:

• Javascript authentication can happen with-in a popup window and does not require a page reload you can also just perform a top.location.href redirect.
• PHP authentication involves a redirect to an authentication page.

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Also see this thread, in particular this response.