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Facebook Forms

Tutorial: creating a Facebook form

Facebook Forms: the updated survey
Facebook Forms: the updated survey

This section of the documentation is a hands-on tutorial that explains how to create a form and get it displayed on Facebook. Click on the screenshot to the right to see the end result: we'll be creating a simple survey that asks people to rate social networks. Even though the form is very simple, you'll be able to apply the same process to your own forms, regardless of complexity.

Alternatively, if you already have a form set up in Form Tools and would like to use that instead, go right ahead! After finishing this page, just skip steps 1 and 2 and go straight to installing and configuring the module.

Before leaping into the tutorial, let's start with a quick overview of the whole process.

How it works

Your forms are implemented as Facebook "Apps". Apps are really just code that runs on websites outside of facebook.com itself. In our case, the code is running your website, through the Facebook Forms module. Normally, it's the responsibility of App developers to create applications and code that is compatible and consistent with Facebook. The Facebook Forms module does exactly that: it converts Form Tools forms to run properly on Facebook - so you really don't need to know the nasty details.

The process of adding your forms works like this:

  1. You create a form in Form Tools (Internal or External, API or POST - anything is fine!)
  2. You go to the Facebook Form module and supply a few basic configuration information (only 2 fields are necessary)
  3. You create a unique App URL for it via the Facebook developer section (This is REALLY easy)
  4. You optionally return to the Form Tools module to make a few minor tweaks, like making the "Like" button appear, and changing the occasional label, and, well... you're done!

Alright, enough chatter - let's go to our tutorial so you can see something more concrete. I really think you'll find the process exceedingly simple once you see how it works.