Facebook Graph API - get a photos album ID - facebook

Question

I'm writing an application that uploads a photo to facebook. I'm not supplying an album ID so an album is created on behalf of my app.
My question is: how do I get the album ID the photo was uploaded to?
When I GET the the photo information the album isn't present in the JSON which was my hope.

Answer 1

Jimmy Sawczuk's answer is close, but doesn't work because FQL Photo table columns aid and pid are Rest/FQL API ids, not Graph API ids.
Fortunately the object_id and album_object_id columns in this table are indexable (contrary to the documentation) so this should give you both Rest/FQL & Graph ids for the album:
select aid, album_object_id from photo where object_id = ${GRAPH_PHOTO_ID}
In general object_id fields in Rest/FQL API responses are Graph API id (except for photo notifications, where it's the Rest/FQL id).
Re HonkyHonk's answer: not all photo link urls have a set parameter; in this case I think you can find the Rest/FQL API photo id from its other parameters, and then use Rest/FQL API to get the album id:
For users with 32-bit user-ids: calculate (id << 32) | pid
eg for http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=7518353&id=549683637 this gives 2360873244068853905
Otherwise concatenate id, _ and pid
eg for http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=155052&id=100002937903251 this gives 100002937903251_155052
It would help a lot if Facebook could document something about the two types of ids. Also the Graph API Photo schema should include the album's Graph API id.

Answer 2

This is the easy way to get it :

Answer 3

This issue has been bugging me for a while as well, but I think I have cracked the nut.
The album ID is hidden in the link value, so if you have a photo-post object from the Graph API, you can retrieve the Album ID like this:
NSString *link = [item valueForKey:#"link"];
NSString *album_id = nil;
NSRange fRange = [link rangeOfString:#"set=a."];
if(fRange.location != NSNotFound) {
NSInteger firstPos = fRange.location + 6;
NSInteger endPos = [link rangeOfString:#"." options:NSLiteralSearch range:NSMakeRange(firstPos, 25)].location;
album_id = [[link substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(firstPos, endPos - firstPos)] copy];
}
It could probably all be stripped down to one line of code, but I think this is more readable.
For getting the album information use:
[facebook requestWithGraphPath:album_id andDelegate:delegate];
For getting all the photos in an album use:
[facebook requestWithGraphPath:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/photos", album_id] andDelegate:delegate];
Hope this can help someone.

Answer 4

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have the photo ID but need the album ID. You could try using the photo FQL table with the following query:
SELECT aid, pid FROM photo WHERE pid = '<your photo id>'

Answer 5

Long, clunky, but theoretically valid way:
http://graph.facebook.com/userid/albumswill get you a list of all the albums the user lets you see, then you can search the album objects (api here) for created_times that match the time you created the album, which you can store when you create the album.
This is almost certainly a horrible way to do it, but it should work.

Answer 6

Richard Barnett's solution works well for me, I use this as an FQL query through the Graph API to get a JSON response like I would for any other Graph API query:
https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=select+album_object_id+FROM+photo+WHERE+object_id='[PHOTOID]'
This returns:
{
"data": [
{
"album_object_id": "10150531092908837"
}
]
}
Then you can access the album ID using:
<?php
$strPhotoAlbumID = $objFacebookAPI->data[0]->album_object_id;
?>
This is the cleanest solution i've found as Facebook constantly change the format of their photo and album URLs so parsing these with RegEx wont work as a long term fix.

Answer 7

I ended up just using the legacy REST api since the album ID is passed with the link to the image in the server response. I then used a regex to pull the id out.
Not the best solution and I wouldn't recommend it but I feel its better than adding another several server requests to the code.

Answer 8

function get_album_id_by_album_name($album_name){//return array of data
$fql = 'SELECT aid, owner, name, object_id FROM album WHERE owner=me() and name="'.$album_name.'"';
$param = array(
'method' => 'fql.query',
'query' => $fql,
'callback' => ''
);
$fqlResult = $this->facebook->api($param);
return $fqlResult;
}

Answer 9

String albumID = "https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=192570127478130&set=a.135556629846147.24342.100001754323389&type=1";
albumID = albumID.split("&set=a.")[1];
albumID = albumID.split("\\.")[0];
System.out.println(albumID);