How do I retrieve photos from a Facebook group using the GraphAPI? - facebook

Question

I would like to retrieve photos from a facebook group using the GraphAPI. Based on FB Docs I don't see any connections to photos. I would like to get the photos and the users who uploaded them.

Answer 1

Graph API:
http://graph.facebook.com/GROUP_ID/?fields=name,description,albums
return
{
"name": "Group name",
"description": "Group description",
"id": "GROUP_ID",
"albums": {
"data": [
{
"id": "GROUP_ALBUM_ID",
"name": "GROUP_ALBUM_NAME",
"link": "GROUP_ALBUM_LINK",
"created": 1352388257,
"modified": 1352388257,
"cover_pid": 444427468954616,
"count": 22
}
],
"paging": {
"next": "https://graph.facebook.com/GROUP_ID/albums?limit=25&offset=25"
}
}
}
and next query
http://graph.facebook.com/GROUP_ALBUM_ID/photos?fields=picture,source,name&type=uploaded

Answer 2

Ive been digging a bit in the same issue.
We have a group album which is has this url
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.10150651435446985
So the ID seems to be oa.10150651435446985
Another empty album gets album gets the set-id oa.10150652583791985
A note in the same group id 10150652589396985
Notice the similarity in ID's.
The direct link: http://facebook.com/10150651435446985 works to go to the album.
The album is created by user 1128233556 and the groupid is 184760601984.
Other, individual (not in an album) group photos are in "set" o.184760601984 where the digit represents the group id.
So what does "o" and "oa" stand for? a=album, o=?
Pictures have the following URL: https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/420015_3293876662264_1128233556_33234982_110700674_n.jpg
420015_3293876662264_1128233556_33234982_110700674
??????_PHOTOID_______USER_______????_____?????????
Who can make something out of al that?

Answer 3

I have the same problem / here is my partial answer, which remains kind of hack :
one can retrieve photos posted on a group via the FQL group.stream or the GraphAPI group.feed (playing around with the facebook graphApi explorer or the fql query/multiquery test console).
This way you can retrieve all needed information, included a valid id to retrieve the photo, and one to retrieve the object from the graph.
BUT, this is only valid for individual photos.
since my previous answer was deleted, i won't repost it here, but remind that my similar problem is detailed in this thread FQL or GraphAPI unable to retrieve PHOTO ALBUM or VIDEO posted on a GROUP , which, if ever solved, might even as well help people for this very problem here.
Thomas

Answer 4

I don't think Albums in groups R treated like albums on Profile pages. The pics have aid ="0" Even if they are part of albums.
I used The Image below:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151350034089218 is the link to the image. And you can guess where I got the object_ID.
In this example 10151350034089218 is the object_ID for an image in an album for my group "T_Group" The link to the group is https://www.facebook.com/groups/217697621700825/.
You can then run the FQL query
SELECT aid
FROM photo
WHERE object_id = 10151350034089218
you'll get
aid
====
0
Even though it is part of an album "Hugh Laurie".
I tried the same FQL query with images in albums on my profile and they always returned an aid with some Number other than 0.
I plan on posting to Facebook bugs, I hope I get a fix. Unless its running as intended.
I tried:
SELECT pid
FROM photo_tag
WHERE subject =217697621700825
...and I got PIDs to photos posted to the group page not images in albums.

Answer 5

I wish I had found a more direct method, but this appears to have promise:
get /me/groups or /me?fields=groups to get the groups ids.
From that, get {group_id}/feed?type=photo This returns just the photos from the feed, but all you really get (toward this goal) is the photo's id (returned as object_id).
Then for each photo you can get /{object_id} which returns all the links to the various sizes of the image.
I did this research in Facebook Graph Explorer, so keep that in mind as you try to implement it.
Rob