Facebook Canvas App & Standalone Web App Best Practices

Good afternoon everyone! I recently started working on a couple Facebook apps and am using the Facebook c# sdk with MVC3 & Azure with SQL Azure (being lazy to start & will probably migrate some to Azure Tables after I flush out more of the protype & design). I'd like to see what everyone's thoughts are around architecting an application that is a Facebook canvas app as well as a standalone web application. My goal is to have an application that is completely standalone outside of Facebook and can be used by people without Facebook accounts but it is also a Facebook canvas app so Facebook users can take advantage of that deep integration. Right now I'm designing this to be in the same Azure webrole with the same service / business logic tier and just a different presentation tier via controllers based upon whether the user is using the standalone web application or the Facebo开发者_JAVA百科ok canvas app.

My goal is to have full functionality in the standalone web app and also in the Facebook canvas app. Are there any architectural best practices or pitfalls I should be concerned with? Does my approach seem right?

Thanks folks! Matt

You may run into some sizing issues, especially inside a facebook canvas that has a set width (scroll bars always looked ugly to me but if your ok with them then that won't be an issue) As far as having a page that can work in FB and through a stand alone, you shouldn't have an issue. Just code the webpage how you want it and add the FB code to it. If facebook is not open, then the code will be ignored.

The only real thing to be wary of is the information you want to move around (if there is more then one page, or a login required). I am guessing this will not be an issue though if you want to use a standalone as well.

Edit Another issue that always annoys me is with signed requests as well, because for the most part facebook only sends one. If you need to use that in your facebook portion, make sure you have a work around for when its a standalone outside of facebook.