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ruby-on-railsfacebooktwitteromniauthkoala

Rails app to work with Facebook/Twitter etc

Apologies in advance for a rather non-specific question:

I am looking for some guidance on how 'best' to get a Rails app to talk to FB/Twitter etc and I see that there are options like Koala (https://github.com/arsduo/koala) for FB (and others for Twitter and so on.)

But then, there's also OmniAuth - which is for Authentication - but again for FB/Twitter/LinkedIn etc.

So how do the pieces of this puzzle fit together - do I need to use both OmniAuth and Koala for example if my Rails app needs to integrate with FB? Do I need just one? Is there something one uses OmniAuth for first and then Koala for the rest? A few sentences about the lay of the land here would really help me understand what each does and how they fit together.

Thanks!

Solution

  • Omniauth is simply an authentication library. It doesn't actually interface with the rest of the Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn API. The only thing you do with it is bypass custom user profiles in favor of "Log In With Facebook".

    Koala and other libraries similar to that are just rails-specific API interfaces. You can use them within your app to do deep integration into their Facebook or Twitter profile.