How do I get user's checked-in places' categories? - facebook

Question

I want to get logged in user's Check-ins along with the category of the place he has checked-in.
I tried to fetch the user likes and their categories and this is what worked for me - "/me/likes?fields=category"
Following is the response returned:
{
"data": [{
"name": "11 East Street Cafe",
"category": "Restaurant/Cafe",
"id": "94871278677"
},{
"name": "ABC DEF",
"category": "Politician",
"id": "177526890164"
}],
"paging": {
"cursors": {
"before": "NDkyMzg4OTc3NTYyMjk3",
"after": "MTc3NTI2ODkwMTY0"
}
}
}
For check-ins, I tried "/me/feed?with=location&fields=place,story" and it returns the checked in places list. It returns me following:
{
"data": [{
"place": {
"id": "117586118328311",
"name": "Carraba's",
"location": {
"city": "Ellicott City",
"country": "United States",
"latitude": 39.27153726574,
"longitude": -76.800542073324,
"state": "MD",
"zip": "21043"
}
},
"story": "ABC was at Carraba's.",
"id": "1533836476934935_1546360939015822"
}, {
"place": {
"id": "876737405718973",
"name": "Chipotle Mexican Grill",
"location": {
"city": "Baltimore",
"country": "United States",
"latitude": 39.2866707,
"longitude": -76.6196671,
"state": "MD",
"street": "300 W Pratt St",
"zip": "21201"
}
},
"story": "Aadya Extentia was at Chipotle Mexican Grill.",
"id": "1533836476934935_1546360502349199"
}],
"paging": {
"next": "https://graph.facebook.com/v2.5/1533836476934935/feed?fields=place,story&wi…WzlgXDpe8ZCV8kHWcO2aNxlARSpwIZByS9OWkU8VC3nj2E3VoiLkJNpy2ESOI1R7fHIOJQZDZD"
}
}
But it does not return the category of checked-in place. i.e. I want know if it is a restaurant, museum or stadium, etc.
How do I do it?
Thanks.

Answer 1

You can do this using Field Expansion:
/me/feed?with=location&fields=place{name,category},story
Edit: Looks like this is working for API version <= 2.4 only, but not any more with v2.5.
Edit #2: I filed a bug report to ask if this was deliberately removed, or if it is a bug. https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1550467468600884/

Answer 2

Even though a Place is a Page, I can't successfully retrieve the category field through Field Expansion...
This can be done with a batch request, by using the output of the first query as input for the second query:
curl \
-F 'access_token={USER_ACCESS_TOKEN}' \
-F 'include_headers=false' \
-F 'batch=[{ "method":"GET","name":"get-places","relative_url":"me/feed?with=location&fields=place{id,name,location},story&limit=100", "omit_response_on_success": false },{"method":"GET","relative_url":"?ids={result=get-places:$.data.*.place.id}&fields=id,name,category"}]' \
https://graph.facebook.com
See
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/place/
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/making-multiple-requests/