How to detect when facebook's FB.init is complete

Pablo picture Pablo · Aug 23, 2010 · Viewed 120.7k times · Source

The old JS SDK had a function called FB.ensureInit. The new SDK does not seem to have such function... how can I ensure that I do not make api calls until it is fully initiated?

I include this in the top of every page:

<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>
  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({
      appId  : '<?php echo $conf['fb']['appid']; ?>',
      status : true, // check login status
      cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session
      xfbml  : true  // parse XFBML
    });
    FB.Canvas.setAutoResize();
  };

  (function() {
    var e = document.createElement('script');
    e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js';
    e.async = true;
    document.getElementById('fb-root').appendChild(e);
  }());
</script>

Answer

serg picture serg · Aug 23, 2010

Update on Jan 04, 2012

It seems like you can't just call FB-dependent methods (for example FB.getAuthResponse()) right after FB.init() like before, as FB.init() seems to be asynchronous now. Wrapping your code into FB.getLoginStatus() response seems to do the trick of detecting when API is fully ready:

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({
        //...
    });

    FB.getLoginStatus(function(response){
        runFbInitCriticalCode(); 
    });

};  

or if using fbEnsureInit() implementation from below:

window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({
        //...
    });

    FB.getLoginStatus(function(response){
        fbApiInit = true;
    });

};  

Original Post:

If you want to just run some script when FB is initialized you can put some callback function inside fbAsyncInit:

  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({
      appId  : '<?php echo $conf['fb']['appid']; ?>',
      status : true, // check login status
      cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session
      xfbml  : true  // parse XFBML
    });
    FB.Canvas.setAutoResize();

    runFbInitCriticalCode(); //function that contains FB init critical code
  };

If you want exact replacement of FB.ensureInit then you would have to write something on your own as there is no official replacement (big mistake imo). Here is what I use:

  window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
    FB.init({
      appId  : '<?php echo $conf['fb']['appid']; ?>',
      status : true, // check login status
      cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session
      xfbml  : true  // parse XFBML
    });
    FB.Canvas.setAutoResize();

    fbApiInit = true; //init flag
  };

  function fbEnsureInit(callback) {
        if(!window.fbApiInit) {
            setTimeout(function() {fbEnsureInit(callback);}, 50);
        } else {
            if(callback) {
                callback();
            }
        }
    }

Usage:

fbEnsureInit(function() {
    console.log("this will be run once FB is initialized");
});