I'm trying to get demographics for fans of a page on Facebook - mostly country and city, but age and gender as secondary.
The primary way to do it is using FQL and doing a query in the insights table. Like so:
FB.api({
method: 'fql.query',
query: "SELECT metric, value FROM insights WHERE object_id='288162265211' AND metric='page_fans_city' AND end_time=end_time_date('2011-04-16') AND period=period('lifetime')"
}, callback);
The problem with this, however, is that the table returns a maximum of 19 records only, both for the country and the city stats. The response for a page I'm testing is as such:
[
{
"metric": "page_fans_city",
"value": {
"dallas": "12345",
"atlanta": "12340",
(...)
"miami": "12300"
}
}
]
So I'd like to know if there's any alternative to that -- to get demographics of the current fans of a page (no snapshot necessary).
Things I've tried:
Using LIMIT and OFFSET on the query do nothing (other than, sometimes, give me an empty list).
One alternative that has been discussed in the past is to use the "/members" method from the Graph API (more here) to get a list of all users, and then parse through that list. That simply doesn't work - a method exists, and it may have worked in the past, but it's not valid anymore (disabled?).
Request:
https://graph.facebook.com/platform/members?access_token=...
Response:
{"error":
{
"type":"OAuthException",
"message":"(#604) Your statement is not indexable. The WHERE clause must contain an indexable column. Such columns are marked with * in the tables linked from http:\/\/developers.facebook.com\/docs\/reference\/fql "
}}
Other solution was to do a query to the page_fan table and filtering by page_id. This doesn't work, either; it may have worked in the past, but now it says that the page_id column is not indexable therefore it cannot be used (same error as above, which leads me to believe /members uses the same internal API that has been disabled). Page_fan query is only useful to check if individual users are fans of a page.
There's also the like table, but that's only useful for Facebook items (like posts, photos, links, etc), and not Facebook Pages.
Going to the insights website about the Page, you can see the data in some nice graphs and tables, and download an Excel/CSV spreadsheet with the historic demographics data... however, it also limits the data to 19 entries (sometimes 20 with a few holes in there as cities trade top positions though).
Any other hint on how to get that data? I'd either like the insights query with more results, or at least a way to get all the page fans so I could do the location query myself later (even if the page I want to get it from has almost 5 million fans... gulp).
The data pipeline for this metric is currently limited to 20 items. This is a popular feature request and something Facebook hopes to improve soon.
Related
I use
<fb:comments-count href=http://e-drpciv.ro/intrebare/963/></fb:comments-count>
I also try with quotes
<fb:comments-count href="http://e-drpciv.ro/intrebare/963/"></fb:comments-count>
and the return is always zero:
/**/ FB.__globalCallbacks.fdd5cbfe8aa94c({"data":[{"name":"index_link_stat_url","fql_result_set":[{"url":"http:\/\/e-drpciv.ro\/intrebare\/963\/","commentsbox_count":0}]}]});
Some other links report less comments than real.
Eg. http://e-drpciv.ro/intrebare/35 report only 3 comments
I need to update something in my code? Or is just a facebook issue and I need to wait?
This problem persist for two days.
If someone shares someone else story it wouldn't show you the comments of that previous share in your /home, but when you query the fql to get comment_count of that object "SELECT comment_info FROM photo WHERE object_id = 1234567890" it will count you all comments from all shares, this is why when you query the /home with FB API you will find posts without comments but with the SELECT ... it will return you positive number of comment's count. i belive that there is some join to make or to can get only the current user.
I'm trying to do a search using FQL.
Using the Graph API, it works but there are more options using FQL.
Using something like
https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=myquery&access_token=mytoken
it work fine.
I'm looking for the equivalent in FQL.
What query I must write in here
https://api.facebook.com/method/fql.query?query=SELECT%20post_id%2C%20actor_id%2C%20target_id%2C%20message%20FROM%20stream&access_token=mytoken
The query above give me that
Parser error: unexpected end of query
I want to search in all public posts.
I've been looking everywhere but I did not found any solution.
Thanks.
For searching public posts for a string, you need to use the Graph API, and then filter those posts in your script. I don't think searching all public posts is possible in FQL. While FQL is more powerful, it is also more limited.
You are getting an error because you don't have a "WHERE" clause in your query. This is required in FQL.
The limit comes in because you must use at least one indexed column in your WHERE query. For the stream table you must specify either a post via post_id, a user via source_id or filter_key, or a live stream via xid. The indexed fields are marked with a * on the documentation site.
For instance, [this FQL][1]
SELECT post_id,actor_id,target_id,message FROM stream WHERE filter_key = 'others'
AND strpos(message, 'the') >= 0
will get you all posts that show on your access token owner's wall that have not been posted by the owner, with the string 'the' in them. That is the best you can get. If the post isn't visible on their wall, then you won't get the post.
If you try to leave out an indexed field, FQL will throw a 'Your statement is not indexable' error.
[1]: SELECT post_id,actor_id,target_id,message FROM stream WHERE filter_key = 'others' and strpos(message,'the') >=0
I look for facebook users (any user, not just my friends or the friends of a specific user) with a pattern in the name, like this:
SELECT first_name,uid FROM user WHERE contains('pete')
This returns an array of people who's name contains "pete" (i.e. also "peter"). The number is quite high, so the results are of course truncated. I would like to grab, in this set (before the server-side truncation) who has most mutual friends with me (or with an arbitrary user id). However, issuing
SELECT first_name,uid FROM user WHERE contains('pete') AND mutual_friend_count > 1
gives and empty set (and no errors). I think the server truncates before applying the latter selection, as in normal SQL would happen, for performance reasons (or explicit limits I missed in the documentation).
I made a second attempt by trying to retrieve all the friends of friends of a userid, and then select on the name. However, retrieving friends of friends is not allowed (and technically difficult because some friends hide their list of friends, and this breaks the query).
I can see no other way to achieve my goal... is there any? (I mean: given a userid, search for users with highest number of mutual friends).
Your best bet, since there's no FQL solution, would be to begin a database of your own following Facebook's best practices and policies of course. That way you can structure your data. Data can be kept current by setting up Facebook's Realtime updates API (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/realtime/) to capture when new friendships are made.
I just tried it with "order by mutual_friend_count desc" and it worked. So the query needs to be:
SELECT first_name,uid FROM user WHERE contains('pete') order by mutual_friend_count desc
I use graph api to get the picture's comments, but I want to first sort the results by creating time and then return to the latest data. Similar to the sql statement 'order by create_time desc', I do not know if have such a parameter.
Currently used to offset and limit access to the latest data, but also know the total number of comments,
pagesize = 25;
offset = comments.count - pagesize;
limit = 25;
url = "https://graph.facebook.com/" + object_id + "/comments?access_token=" + access_token + "&limit=" + limit + "&offset=" + limit;
next page：
offset -= 25
but comments.ount of numerical sometimes is not accurate
and the result of the request URL to return to sometimes don't match
Whether to have very good solution
Or I used the wrong way (‘limit’ and ‘offset’ Parameter)!!!
Thank you for your answer.
"Graphics API" the existence of the cache?
i post a message and 46 comments.requests url, set the parameters:
offset=0&limit=1
Then it should return to the last comment (latest one), the actual return to the middle of a comment, and I tested a few times, set the
offset and limit. According to the returned results, the middle one is
the latest comment
If I set the limit value is greater than the 'comment.count', the returned data is all, the official website and facebook consistent
Because the cache reason?
Thanks again~
#dbau - You are still better off using FQL. In my experience, unless you are making a very simple call, you have very little control over what you get via a Graph API call.
Why don't you want to use FQL? FQL is an endpoint of the Graph API. There is still some data that can only be returned via FQL.
This will get you the result you're looking for. The query needs to be URL encoded. I left it in plain text for clarity.
https://graph.facebook.com/fql?access_token=[TOKEN]&q=
SELECT id, fromid, text, time, likes, user_likes FROM comment
WHERE object_id = [OBJECT_ID] ORDER BY time DESC LIMIT 0,[N]
You may find you don't get [N] comments returned each time, because Facebook filters out items that are not visible to the access_token owner after the query is run. You could either up the LIMIT and filter out any excess results returned or if you are using a user access_token, you could add AND can_like = TRUE to the WHERE clause to be guaranteed that, if they exist, [N] posts visible to the current user are returned.
Graph API returns latest objects first.
Facebook provides 2 keywords to filter the fetched data.
Limit : Returns "limit" number of latest records
Offset : Returns "limit" number of records from the offset position
So to retrieve latest "x" comments posted for an object
https://graph.facebook.com/[OBJECTID]?limit=[X]&offset=0
To retrieve next "X" comments (page wise)
https://graph.facebook.com/[OBJECTID]?limit=[X]&offset=[X*PAGENo]
Hope the answer is clear enough for you.
I would like to get work place information of a user using FQL.
When I use the Graph API and get the User object, it contains work information, which is essentially a list of the work history. The list elements contain nodes of employer, location, description, etc...
The nodes appear to be pages internally. If I take the id of a node, e.g. from the employer, and use FQL to query a page with that page_id, I do get an object with corresponding information.
My question now is, how do I use FQL to get the same information without accessing the Graph API? What table stores the work-related information, for example how do I find all the page_id of the employers of a given user?
The reason I insist on using FQL only is performance. Of course I could access the Graph API for all the users in question and get the info that way, but I'm looking for an FQL-only solution.
You can get this information from FQL. Read the "user" table and look for the work field. The JSON data returned should be the same format as the one for Graph, i.e., the result is an array and each result should include an "employer" object with an "id" and "name" field.
You will need user_work_history or friends_work_history to access this field.