Facebook Releases SDK 3.0 For iOS

Facebook has just released a major update for its software development kit (SDK) for iOS developers.

Facebook SDK 3.0 for iOS will make it easier and faster for developers to integrate Facebook into their apps., especially with the launch of iOS 6 later this fall, which includes deep Facebook integration.

Facebook SDK 3.0 for iOS includes the following new features:

• Better user session management:

Facebook has introduced a new method to manage auths, user sessions and tokens using FBSessions, which manages, stores and refreshes user tokens with default behaviors you can override.

• Ready-to-Use Native UI Views:

The SDK comes with pre-built user interface (UI) components for common functions, which should make it easier for developers to integrate Facebook in their apps and offer users a consistent user experience.

• Modern Objective-C language features support:

It includes support for Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), blocks that should make it easier to handle sessions and calls to asynchronous Facebook APIs along with key language features like idiomatic API naming and KVO.

• Improved Facebook APIs support:

Batching for SDK requests, which should significantly improve latency for Facebook API calls.

Facebook SDK 3.0 for iOS also includes support for iOS 6 that will be released later this fall:

After iOS 6 launches to users, the SDK will automatically use the native Facebook Login in iOS 6 when available. Just enable Login with Facebook and the SDK will ensure your apps work seamlessly on all iOS versions 4.0 and later. The SDK will continue to support the iOS 6 integration in beta until Apple’s user launch later this fall.

With the launch of iOS 6 later this fall, it should give enough time to app developers to update their apps to incorporate the new features in Facebook SDK.