Facebook Platform experiencing JS SDK issues

Earlier this week, some Facebook Connect users started experiencing issues with the Facebook Platform's JavaScript (JS) Software Development Kit (SDK). Multiple bug reports have been logged on Facebook Developers describing the issue and finally today Facebook is taking action.

Essentially, the Facebook JSSDK with locale en_US does not load and instead returns an error. To test it yourself, just navigate to connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js and see what result you get. At the time of writing, the JavaScript file returned "/* Not a valid locale. */" for me.

One such bug report, titled "connect.facebook.net fails to load," didn't get much traction. On Tuesday at 2:07 PM EST, Facebook engineer Zhen Fang posted this message: "We're not able to repro this. Still an issue for you?"

Another bug report, titled "all.js fails to load with locale error," was much more successful. Facebook engineer Colm Doyle posted this today (updated):

Thanks for the report. We are actively investigating. (10:11 PM) We have updated Platform Live Status to reflect the outage. (10:41pm) Thanks for the report. We are looking into this. (10:57 PM) We're hoping to push a fix very soon, but in the meantime you can workaround by pointing your code to http://connect.beta.facebook.net/en_US/all.js (11:25 PM)

Indeed, the Platform Status webpage now shows the following, as of 10:12 PM:

Currently, the JS SDK is returning /* Not a valid locale. */. We are working on a fix now. We will update the live status as we have more information. You can following along in https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/203275643103137

It's not clear how widespread this issue is, but I have noticed that ZDNet's Facebook integrations have been acting up all week (for example, at the time of writing, the Like button does not appear on any article, but I'm sure it will be back by the time I hit publish). By the way, my understanding is that this issue is separate from the Facebook outage that occurred yesterday.

I have contacted Facebook and will update you if I hear back.

Update: Facebook engineer Ray C. He posted "This should now be resolved. Thanks for your patience." at 11:35 PM and changed the bug report to Fixed. As of 11:50 PM, the Platform Status reads "JS SDK issues resolved" and "The issues with JS SDK should now be resolved."

See also:

• Facebook lists supported and deprecated SDKs
• Facebook tries to appease frustrated developers
• Facebook launches improved Auth Dialog
• Facebook bans browser plugin FGS, and its developer
• Fbootstrapp: Bootstrap for Facebook apps
• Facebook Comments go mobile