Facebook's graph search is indeed a great way to find people with certain interests, activities, etc.
However, some queries that work well within Facebook's search interface have failed with the API.
Those queries include:
- People who like tennis.
- People who checked in at Heathrow Airport.
- People who work at Facebook.
This is how I wrote the query:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=people+who+like+tennis&type=user
I want to return all the user objects that match the query "people who like tennis".
Is this possible or is the Graph API just limited to simple one word queries?
Thanks!
this is not possible with the Graph API search. Have a look at
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/v2.1#search
to see what is possible concerning Graph API search.
Graph Search that you use on Facebook.com and the Graph API search that you use using the API are two completely different things. There are no API for Graph Search.
Related
I'm using Facebook graph Api to search users and data that i get is kinda different from that i get from Facebook UI. For example search response of User interface is friends, mutual friends and other related data in first. How can i query to get related data for current user ( i.e friends and mutual friends in first place).
Here is query that i'm using to search users.
https://graph.facebook.com/v2.5/search?fields=id,name,picture.type(normal)&limit=50&q={q}&type=user&access_token={token}
and data that i get is kinda different from that i get from Facebook UI
That’s because those are two completely different things.
The search functionality offered via the UI is called Graph Search. But the powerful possibilities that offers are not exposed via API. (To protect user privacy, and keep apps from doing extended user profiling via that data.)
Searching via API is limited to what is listed here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/#search
That’s not much – but it’s all you get.
I'm using Facebook graph Api to search users and data that i get is kinda different from that i get from Facebook UI. For example search response of User interface is friends, mutual friends and other related data in first. How can i query to get related data for current user ( i.e friends and mutual friends in first place).
Here is query that i'm using to search users.
https://graph.facebook.com/v2.5/search?fields=id,name,picture.type(normal)&limit=50&q={q}&type=user&access_token={token}
and data that i get is kinda different from that i get from Facebook UI
That’s because those are two completely different things.
The search functionality offered via the UI is called Graph Search. But the powerful possibilities that offers are not exposed via API. (To protect user privacy, and keep apps from doing extended user profiling via that data.)
Searching via API is limited to what is listed here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/#search
That’s not much – but it’s all you get.
I'm developing an app in which the user needs to search and select a person from Facebook. I'm able to search in the Facebook Graph API using "https://graph.facebook.com/search", however this only give very general results and not the 'close' people Facebook would normally suggest when searching in the search field on Facebook.com. In this case it is impossible to find someone with a regular name.
Does anybody know how I can personalize my query or go around this problem?
The Graph API search is not the same nor directly comparable to the search in the Facebook website.
See
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/v2.3#search
I'm trying to replicate some functionality of the Facebook web interface via the API and am a bit stuck. Basically, via the web site I can enter 'Favorite pages of people named "jim"' in the search box and get a slew of results, but I haven't found a way to replicate this type of query via the API. Is such a thing possible?
As WizKid commented, Graph Search is not available with the API, you can only use the Search API for searching: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/v2.1#search
Keep in mind that public search and news feed search are not available in v2.0 anymore, see changelog: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog
Using the search API here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/v2.1
I've noticed a big discrepancy between searching for a name using that API and searching for a name in the typeahead box at facebook.com. I imagine part of it is that the typeahead results are weighted using social relevancy like: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2013/11/10/script-shows-facebook-ranks-friends/
I don't believe it's possible to do an API call like that, but is it possible to do an approximation? I tried ordering by mutual friends using FQL (like this question asks: FQL, search for non-friend people and sort by mutual friends) but the results seem to be too truncated.
Region/city targeting may be useful, but ideally I'd like to a way to do an accurate search without having to specify that.