I'm looking at the Facebook Graph API documentation and noticed something odd, or maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
This page here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.9/page/likes describes /{page-id}/likes as returning "The Pages that this Page Likes"
However, this page: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.9/object/likes (which seems to be describing the same endpoint if a {page-id} is passed in for {object-id} is saying that it returns "An array of User or Page objects representing the people or Pages that liked the object".
The first link says /{page-id}/likes will return outgoing likes for a page, whereas the second link suggests the same endpoint will return incoming likes. Testing it out in the Graph Explorer indicates that the 2nd link is true, which makes me wonder how I can access the outgoing likes described by the first link, as that is what I am interested in.
Am I misunderstanding something here? Thanks!
This is a bug in the Facebook documentation: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/638061899718019/
Related
For the talking_about_count figure returned under the Page Graph API (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.3/page) what is the detailed metric definition for this?
All it says currently under the documentation is "the number of people talking about this Page" but what constitutes someone to be talking about a page?
See
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.3/insights#page_stories
The number of people sharing stories about your page ('People Talking About This' / PTAT). These stories include liking your Page, posting to your Page's Wall, liking, commenting on or sharing one of your Page posts, answering a Question you posted, RSVPing to one of your events, mentioning your Page, phototagging your Page or checking in at your Place
In the "Posts" section of Facebook Insights, you can click on your latest posts and get detailed information about them:
I'm trying to recreate this data in a web application, using the Facebook SDK for .NET. I have found most of these numbers through Facebook's Graph API, e.g:
.../v2.3/(page-id_post-id)/insights/post_impressions_unique/lifetime
.../v2.3/(page-id_post-id)/insights/post_stories_by_action_type/lifetime
.../v2.3/(page-id_post-id)/insights/post_consumptions_by_type/lifetime
.../v2.3/(page-id_post-id)/insights/post_negative_feedback_by_type/lifetime
...except the post content and the numbers marked in red. Using Fiddler, it looks like Facebook fetches these values from a URL outside the Graph API:
https://www.facebook.com/ajax/pages/insights/view_story/...
However, that URL is only accessible if you're logged in to Facebook. So, the question is:
Given an access token, can my (server-side) web application somehow get the post content, or at least the missing numbers? Preferably using the Facebook SDK, but any solution will do.
Update:
As #CBroe points out, simply querying the post id itself gives you enough info to recreate the post content:
.../v2.3/(post-id)?fields=name,message,picture,link
So, the last piece of the puzzle is to get the missing numbers. "Likes - On Post" can be found by querying the post's /likes with a summary:
.../v2.3/(page-id_post-id)/likes?limit=0&summary=true
..but "Comments - On Post" and "Shares - On Post" are trickier.
Querying .../v2.3/(page-id_post-id)/comments does give the number of comments on the post, but doesn't include answers to those comments, which are included in the number 5 in the picture above. You can recursively query /comments on each comment id, but that would generate too many queries to be worth it.
One might think that querying .../v2.3/(post-id)/sharedposts could give you the number of times a post has been shared, but it only gives you a few of the shared instances (due to other users' privacy settings?)
to clarify, you're trying to get the number of likes, comments, and shares.
Likes [post_id]/likes?summary=True&limit=0
NOTE: You can also call it when calling the post fields [post_id]?fields=id,likes.summary(true).limit(0)
Comments [post_id]/comments?summary=true&limit=0
NOTE: comments edge has a param filter https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.3/object/comments which may be why you see different numbers
NOTE: You can also call then when calling the post fields [post_id]?fields=id,comments.summary(true).limit(0)
Shares [post_id]?fields=shares
the sharedposts edge is empty b/c you don't have "read_stream" permission for the user's posts, https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.3/object/sharedposts#readperms
Edit (by OP):
Adjustments to get the same numbers that are presented in the "Post Details" popup:
Comments - On Post: (page-id_post-id)/comments?filter=stream&summary=true&limit=0
Using only post-id without prepending page-id gives the same result, but you also get a debug message saying "...actual number of results returned might be different depending on privacy settings."
Shares - On Post: (post-id)/sharedposts?fields=id
Don't prepend page-id here - that yields an empty result set.
Sadly, ?summary=true doesn't work, so I used the fields filter just to reduce the amount of data.
The suggested (post-id)?fields=shares gives a different number which seems similar to the insights numbers, but doesn't add up to any of them.
As I am learning and getting familiar with the FB OG API I am finding that I am lacking some of the basics. For example I see here that I use the action type news.publishes to post an article. However the access_token is for the user owning the page and thus it will go to their news feed and not the page (in this case their company page). Correct?
If I understand correctly then how does one get it to post to a specific page. Is there an access_token collection you iterate through till you find the one for the company page?
TIA
JB
You should be able to use /PAGE_ID/feed? Where page id is the numerical assigned by facebook..or the text friendly name you used.
I'm experimenting with the Graph API, specifically the News Feed query (me/home). And right off the bat, I can see that the JSON returned does not match what I see on my own facebook page. The API returns some objects that are not on the page, and vice versa. I can't figure out what's going on here. I don't think it's about people I've unsubscribed from or anything like that.
Is this expected behavior, or am I doing something wrong? Is there documentation somewhere that explains what the difference is?
edit 22-Nov-11: this is never going to be answered, is it.
NewsFeed via api ordered by time but on facebook.com ordered by top stories
Open your recent news feed > https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr
you will find that it's the same as api (y)
When I type name of e.g. youtube clip in facebook search I can get number of people that share this link.
Is it posibble to fetch list of people sharing given like using facebook api?
No, you can't get who shared, only the total number. The easiest way to see the count is, for instance:
http://graph.facebook.com/http://stackoverflow.com
This solved my problem !
http://graph.facebook.com/http://stackoverflow.com
Creating Facebook apps was very easy, but now, you need to apply and ask for approval the app ... that sucks ...
You can do this with Facebook's FQL (Facebook Query Language), it gives you more information than the previously mentioned Graph API method, but Facebook are apparently going to turn off the FQL API on August 7, 2016. So its not going to be useful in the long term.
https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=select+comment_count%2C+like_count%2C+total_count%2C+share_count%2C+click_count+from+link_stat+where+url%3D%27stackoverflow.com%27
The interesting thing about this is it shows the result given by the previously mentioned Facebook Graph API request, i.e:
http://graph.facebook.com/http://stackoverflow.com
is actually giving the "total count", which is actually the sum of the likes, comments and shares of that link, the FQL method gives you the actual individual counts for comments, shares and likes.
Another method for getting the actual share count, is to use the links.getStats API call, but it appears to be undocumented, and nobody seems to know how long it will be available for.
Here's how to use it:
https://api.facebook.com/method/links.getStats?urls=stackoverflow.com&format=json