Facebook app development – test users

As users are the biggest Facebook value, most of FB applications are based on users’ profiles. So – how to test FB application?

Certainly – not by sharing personal FB profile credentials with whole dev team.

Also not by creating fictional FB user – this is not an option. Facebook makes it hard to create and maintain such profile. It has to be verified with email and mobile phone number (or credit card number).

FB however gives fully functional mechanism providing test users, that is enough to develop apps. They have their walls, friends, families, profiles etc., and are not visible to real FB users by default (they can be visible to some group of testers, if developer switched proper option).

How to handle test users?

1. go to FB developer site, where You can create FB Application
2. on application tab, click Edit Roles
3. At the bottom of the page there is Test users section where all test users are listed. This is where test users can be created and edited. Each user has option to log in as this user, change his name and set password next to his profile photo. 
4. I still don’t know how to change users’ email (email generated automatically by FB is hard to remember). Partial solution is to change user’s name and surname to simple ones – this will simplify its email address.

This is good way to handle few users at a time, however if app requires a lot of test users they can be managed programatically with API documented here.

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