in our game I'm checking if user is liking some of our Facebook sites.
For most users its working but there are some complaining that they are
having problems with this functionality.
1) I'm requesting "user_likes" permission during logging to Facebook
( users must be logged ).
2) I also take into account so called "paging" of result via Graph API.
( I'm retrieving all user's like-ids piecewise and after many tests
I assumed that it's working fine :o) )
3) Those users that were reporting that this check isn't working
really "like" those sites (before running this check).
So my assumption is that request "me/likes" fails or doesn't work
as expected under some conditions. Can someone help me with this
problem?
It seems that I'm not alone because I found these (unluckily unanswered):
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10772814/checking-facebook-graph-api-for-user-likes-fails-for-some-users
http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/10109773/cant-obtain-user-likes-in-some-cases-using-facebook-graph-api
The only cause I can think of is the Graph cache not being up to date with the user's Like data. If the user only just liked a page, and then you requested the Like data via Graph API, the data may not have been updated yet and therefore would show up as a "non-Liked" page.
Try using a FQL query to do the same check - but instead of paging through the user's like, do a direct check on the Page ID, User ID and Like status. You will have to join across multiple tables to get it working.
Related
I'm trying to get list of events my friend / user attends. This info is publicly visible through Facebook pages.
I'm making a request to /userid/events but it returns empty array of results, though user does have upcoming events and calling /me/events is working. (all is ran in graph explorer)
I couldn't find any documentation about any limitations or required permissions to explain why it's not working e.g. this link
Is it a bug? How to workaround it?
You can use /userid/events with a user who auzhorized your App, but using /me/events is recommended. Either way, just because stuff is public on facebook.com does not mean you can get it with the API. You always need to authorize users before you can get any data, for privacy reasons.
In other words: It´s not a bug, there is no workaround, it´s not possible without user authorization.
I'm trying to write some application that scan user's group posts. When I read the group feed posts using the API I’m interested to get some information on the one who posted this post ('from' field). The graph API today gives only the id and the name of this person. I'm interested also in his work place. I tried taking the user id and to access the / resource and to get his work field , but this field is not returned. When I’m looking on the same user profile in Facebook I see his work place is public, even I’m not connected with him.
Anything I can do to get this user work with the existing Facebook API?
Normally, if the work history info is not public, you'll need the "user_work_history" permission (see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/permissions#reference-extended-profile).
If it's public, you can try calling the
/{USER_ID}?fields=id,work
I'm trying to figure out how to get the total number of comments, posts, likes and fans for any given Facebook fan page and date range using the Facebook API's. I need to be able to do this without the user having to log into Facebook to give the app permissions. This does seem to be possible, as this site is able to do it https://app.conversocial.com/profiler/ .But I don't know how they are doing it.
I've looked into the 'insights' fql table, but this always seems to return empty results. And I've also looked into the 'link_stats' fql table but this doesn't allow a date range to be set.
Does anyone have any idea on how to do this?
You are right. What they are doing is not possible by using the normal Graph API or/and the FQL.
However, Facebook also provides support for two other APIs:
Public Feed API
Keyword Insights API
Access to these APIs is restricted to a limited set of media publishers and usage requires prior approval by Facebook.
I think that they are using the Public Feed API. The documentation of the Public Feed API lists some of the publishers that have been using this API and the site you've mentioned in the question is not in the list. The documentation also doesn't mention anything about getting the Page Insights, but I think it might support this feature (as I see no other way of doing it).
Or, they might be using any other such restricted API which is not yet available to the public and not even documented on the developers website, but is currently in beta/testing phase.
To get the number of fans and the talkabout count, just query the appropriate Open graph ID for the relevant page. For example, for Coca Cola (https://www.facebook.com/cocacola) this is done via
https://graph.facebook.com/40796308305
To get all public infos (Posts etc) use the following request
https://graph.facebook.com/40796308305/feed?access_token={ACCESS_TOKEN}
where {ACCESS_TOKEN} can either be an App Access Token or a personal one. Consider that you can only see public entries.
The ability to query the date ranges is not provided via Facebook ad far as I know. I guess the https://app.conversocial.com/profiler/ application queries each page that is in its index once a day, and saves the results. That's how they're able to provide historical data.
You can try with the following FQL queries or graph API requests for facebook pages,
Graph API
http://graph.facebook.com/nb4cinema
FQL
SELECT name,about,description, fan_count,talking_about_count FROM page WHERE username= 'stackoverflowpage'
In case of FQL tables:
To read the page table you need
no access_token to get public information, or information about public pages that are not demographically restricted.
any valid access_token to get all information about a page that the current session user is able to see.
We have a test fan page. This has poor figures (<10 fans). Statistics are not available due to the lack of fans and likes on that page.
Allthough, conversocial spits out some statistics. They mixed fans and likes to some extent and so my impression is, that they simply parse the page code in order to get what you see.
As you may know, Facebook Page Administrators can select for posts to be visible to only certain countries/langauges ( https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=180817924821 ).
However, I would like to use the Graph API to retrieve feed messages ( /feed ) for ALL countries/languages or be able to select data for a specific country.
For example:
1) I would like to get ALL posts (and comments ...) from all of Starbucks Facebook Page. So no matter what the administrator says, just ALL.
2) I would like to be able to retrieve only the posts that are visible to users in Germany.
Are both these example actually possible? Probably, because I use access_tokens Facebook will probably use my own country/langauge to decide what data I get so that would mean I would have to change country all the time which is of course not an option to ask my users.
Any of you know what to do?
This is only possible if you're using the app as an admin of the posting page.
As you mentioned, the API will detect the user behind your access_token and only display posts that would normally be accessible to them on the desktop site.
This is an intentional restriction, so there's no way around it.
I am developing an web app, which connect to facebook, to get posts, and other stuff liked by users. I have problem with getting all posts from user page using news feed(home connection of Grap API).
When getting access token in my app for user, I ask for read_stream, user_activities and offline access permissions. Then, when I use that token, to get json feed for
https://graph.facebook.com/me/home/?access_token=<retrived_access_token>
some posts(which are show on user page) are missing. I found that posts of my friends, which can be seen only by their friends, are not shown in that feed. The same issue is with posts of users which current I am subscribing.
I was searching on that for a while, and I found, that when I use link from http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/ to get my news feed, there are much more posts. It's seems to use a token generated for test console app for facebook api.
Then I tried to generate access token which would give me similar results using http://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer?method=GET. But even when I give to generated token all possible permissions I could not get it working good, there were still some missing posts.
I read answer in that post, Facebook graph API does not return all posts for user, which suggested, that this is because of permissions set by my people who publish posts, who don't want their data to be retrieved by an app. I run some quick test, and I found that changing that setting is working( when somebody change that setting her posts will disappear from both feeds - that using my app token for user, and that under link on api reference page), but it's not the case.
It seems that this token generated on api reference page have an special permission.
I really need to get as much posts from user page as possible. I know that I will not get those blocked by their author, but as many of my users subscribe other users I really need to get access to kind of posts shown on user page.
I also read Facebook graph API: feeds missing in json response but it was also not helpfull.
I will really appreciate any help.
It is impossible to get a full list of posts from the feed / home Graph API, but you can use FQL to query the stream table to get almost every post made by friends, here is a quick example of how you would do that with the javascript sdk:
var query = 'SELECT post_id FROM stream WHERE filter_key = "others"';
FB.api('fql', {'q': query}, function(posts) { console.log(posts.data); });
This will get you the post ids, which you can then use with graph api to fetch the rest of the post info. Or you can get the full list of fields here, you can't select * in FQL so you'll have to list each piece you want and then get comments and likes and names separately.
There is an assigned/medium bug on this at http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/228057243915183. You can bump up the priority by subscribing and indicating you can reproduce it.
Also see http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/231621496918030 where Facebook has said "the stream table and me/graph have limitations. See the documentation for more info. We're trying to make this more clear in the future." Personally I don't think there is really any more info in the documentation though.