Facebook iOS SDK vs Social framework

Michal Gumny picture Michal Gumny · Mar 30, 2013 · Viewed 9.1k times · Source

I want to write app that is heavily integrated with Facebook. I'm not sure what shoud I use - sdk provided by Facebook or new Social Framework provided by Apple. Do you know some pros and cons of them?

[EDIT] I ended using Social Framework provided by Apple, because it's much easier to integrate, It will be develop in future, and I have access to device owner Facebook account, so user don't have to log in to Facebook when using my app. I want to do some custom stuff, so I get oauth token from ACAccountCredential and then I make requests with AFNetworing to Facebook's Graph API.

Answer

Thomas Denney picture Thomas Denney · Mar 30, 2013

The Social Framework is designed for simple, site-neutral data manipulation. Examples might include getting the user's 'activity feed' (as described by the docs) or posting a new status or photo. It currently works with Twitter, Facebook and Weibo however, other than lack of features, the current main disadvantage is that it is limited to iOS 6, which won't be as much of a problem in the future.

On the other hand Facebook does have an iOS SDK that makes it reasonably easy to integrate Facebook into your app, and it is much more powerful than the Social Framework. Another benefit is that support goes back to iOS 4.3.

I'd recommend using the Facebook iOS SDK over writing your own custom one and using OAuth because Facebook has already done the work for you.