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I have a web application which is configured as a canvas web application in facebook and also has provided a mobile url where mobile specific page is served from the web server. Application has been running for about 3 months and starting last week (I believe the issue started last week, there was no application deployment for the last 3 months ) when I access the application from my android phone , from the apps short cut in the native android facebook application , facebook throws the below error

API Error Code:196 API Error Description: Cannot redirect to desktop web canvas URL on a mobile device. Error Message : redirect_uri is not owned by this application.

I can see that the request is coming to my web server and after I send the redirect url to the mobile, it throws the above error.

Since there was no code changes, I'm a bit confused about this new error, and googling this api error number didn't return any hits except for one japanese website where someone has mentioned about this error last week, but don't see any solutions.

The error message "cannot redirect to desktop web canvas..." seems to be sort of self explanatory but I can't figure out what is wrong , especially since the samething was working before, unless FB has changed any of their code which introduced a new issue or exposed an existing issue in my application configuration.

saj-and
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2 Answers2

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Lost 1 day on this, tried to read 2 Japanese (untraslated) blogs.. Then I figured it out my way!

In the app settings, do NOT enter the same url for the mobile app!

example:

normal canvas or website url: https://www.stackoverflow.com/

(which will automatically bring you to https://www.stackoverflow.com/index.php)

mobile url: https://www.stackoverflow.com/mobile/

(which will automatically bring you to https://www.stackoverflow.com/mobile/index.php)

then make a "mobile" folder in your hosting root folder.

Now the only difference in the mobile folder will be the redirect uri.

I am using an url redirect, which is what facebook suggests.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/dialogs/oauth/

CRITICAL: make sure your redirect uri is not the canvas address but the webserver address!

wrong redirect uri: https://apps.facebook.com/mobile/yourappname/

correct redirect uri: https://yourwebsite.com/mobile/

this will make facebook think that it's an ad hoc mobile website! And everything will work as expected!

Mark Belli
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I had the same problem, and I solved it not set "redirect_uri" param, like this.

$url = $facebook->getLoginUrl(array(
    'scope' => 'xxxx, xxxx, xxxx',
    'display' => 'touch'
));

As you know, we can put "Canvas Page URL" value like

http://apps.facebook.com/[your app name space]

to "redirect_uri" param before, but I guess the spec of the param was changed at the middle of the last week. I got a same error, "API Error Code:196".

Visit my page. http://nobish.jp/facebook/app-install-api-error-code-196.html

ohtsuki2843
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  • Thanks for the response, I still couldn't figure out what needs to be changed, I have a servlet filter from where I do the redirection, here is the redirect url what I have currently which was working until last week , wondering what is the new correct way of constructing the redirect url? – saj-and Mar 12 '12 at 01:29
  • Does anyone know how to paste a URL in stackoverflow as text and not getting converted as a URL, I tried it above but it got converted to a url and most of it is not visible. – saj-and Mar 12 '12 at 01:44
  • Sorry, I built my app with PHP. you build with RestFB? – ohtsuki2843 Mar 12 '12 at 01:55
  • Mine is a java application. Can you paste what is the final value for the $url variable (after the new change), it might help me figure out the fix for mine. – saj-and Mar 12 '12 at 01:59
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    one way is not set the "redirect_uri" param, and the another way set the value your app deployed url like https://[your web server FQDN]/[your app DocumentRoot]/ The result will be the same. The app start(install) url will be https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=[your app id]&redirect_uri=https://[your web server FQDN]/[you app DocumentRoot]/&state=[status] – ohtsuki2843 Mar 12 '12 at 02:07
  • Thanks a lot, not supplying didnt seem to fix the issue in my case but setting redirect_uri to the application web url in 2 places, in the redirect url the first time, and in the auth url the second time seems to do the trick. Thanks a lot. – saj-and Mar 12 '12 at 02:42