title: Facebook integration with Xamarin.Social
body: <p>I'm currently evaluating different alternatives to integrate my iOS app with Facebook. Since I'll be porting the app to Android later, <a href="http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.social/" rel="nofollow">Xamarin.Social</a> seems like an interesting alternative. However, the documentation is a little sparse, and judging by the amount and relevance of my Google searches, there doesn't seem to be a lot of experience with it. </p>
  
  <p>From what I have gathered so far, it seems that Xamarin.Social, and <a href="http://components.xamarin.com/view/xamarin.auth/" rel="nofollow">Xamarin.Auth</a> which it depends on, have it's own <code>AccountStore</code> for storing Facebook (and other social services) accounts that integrates with the iOS KeyChain, which leads me to my qestions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Is the Xamarin.Social <code>AccountStore</code> and the native <code>ACAccountStore</code> integrated in any way? Or does it even wrap all of the native Facebook APIs?</li>
  <li>From what I've read, the native Facebook APIs handle re-authentication when an access token is expired. So if you can access an account in the ACAccountStore, you don't need to worry about it. Does Xamarin.Social also handle refresh of access tokens, or does this need to be handled manually?</li>
  <li>I'm not going to use any of the compose views. I just need the access token of the Facebook account, and my server will do the rest of the Facebook integration. Based on this, should I be looking at other APIs instead? Are the full Facebook APIs overkill for my usage?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong></p>
  
  <p>Another question. What use had the <code>RedirectUrl</code> property of the <code>FacebookService</code>, if I'm using <code>GetAuthenticationUI</code> to present the login view? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks for your input. </p>