Get more detail from Facebook Notifications? - facebook

Question

I'm writing an app that gathers info from a users Facebook notifications. Using the Graph Explorer, I request:
me/notifications?include_read=true
and this returns a bunch of data. Each item is a notification item you would see when logging into Facebook. For example (ID/names changed slightly):
{
"id": "notif_630262196_168132987",
"from": {
"name": "John Bloggs",
"id": "822724665"
},
"to": {
"name": "Dermot Bloggs",
"id": "680265196"
},
"created_time": "2013-01-23T22:58:28+0000",
"updated_time": "2013-01-23T22:58:28+0000",
"title": "John Bloggs commented on your link: \"Goodbye Great Barrier Reef. Goodbye...\"",
"link": "http://www.facebook.com/<removed>/posts/330788937030559?comment_id=1702155",
"application": {
"name": "Links",
"id": "2309869772"
},
"unread": 0,
"object": null
}
The notification is in relation to a comment, but the "title:" field gets truncated if it is too long.
Is there a clean way I can programmatically access the comment directly, so I can get all the text, even if it is a 1000 character comment?
Thanks! :-)

Answer 1

You should be able to get the comment by parsing the link field and querying:
/330788937030559_1702155
or
/POSTID_COMMENTID
When I tested this on my account, I am getting a comments object in the returned data, with the full text of the comments. I've got most permissions enabled in my Graph API. I suspect adding read_stream to the permissions is what will give you this data.

Answer 2

You can avoid parsing! I've been doing a lot of experimentation with notifications and getting what I've called the 'source' object (the source object being the Facebook Graph Object from which the notification originates). Unfortunately, I can't find any documentation on how exactly this mechanism works, but if your app has been granted a lot of permissions, the "object" field which in the JSON you posted is null will actually be populated with the 'source object'. Instead of just "object" : null it will look like this:
"object": {
"id": "587140489_588632201147717",
"from": {
"name": "Dave Rodríguez",
"id": "587140489"
},
"message": ":D ",
"picture": "https://fbcdn-vthumb-a.akamaihd.net/hvthumb-ak-prn1/632550_478955408819349_478954732152750_60483_1892_t.jpg",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=478954732152750",
"source": "http://video.ak.fbcdn.net/hvideo-ak-prn1/v/754708_478955348819355_1792301950_n.mp4?oh=c7295ccfc3773f24de931e4c29f512ce&oe=513F1728&__gda__=1363127340_9302c108824176369427a0b17491b800",
"name": "¡¡¡EL SECRETO DE LA CHANCLA!!!!",
"description": "EL SECRETO DE LAS MADRES, EL MÁS UTILIZADO EN TODAS LAS GENERACIONES, VÉALO USTED MISMO Y ((COMPARTA))!",
"properties": [
{
"name": "Length",
"text": "1:13"
}
],
"icon": "https://fbstatic-a.akamaihd.net/rsrc.php/v2/yD/r/aS8ecmYRys0.gif",
"actions": [
{
"name": "Comment",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/587140489/posts/588632201147717"
},
{
"name": "Like",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/587140489/posts/588632201147717"
}
],
"privacy": {
"value": ""
},
"type": "video",
"status_type": "shared_story",
"object_id": "478954732152750",
"application": {
"name": "Video",
"namespace": "video",
"id": "2392950137"
},
"created_time": "2013-03-10T20:45:20+0000",
"updated_time": "2013-03-10T20:45:20+0000",
"likes": {
"data": [
{
"name": "Adrian Guerra Cuenta Verificada",
"id": "674364748"
}
],
"count": 1
},
"comments": {
"count": 0
}
}
I hope somebody more knowledgeable than me can tell us exactly what permissions we need to see this field populated. I'd figure it out myself but there are so many permissions that brute-forcing the SUM(nCk(77,k),k,1,77)=151115727451828646838271 possible combinations of permissions would take a very long time.