How do I order the friends list returned from the new Facebook Graph API? - facebook

Question

You can get a list of friends of an authenticated user with:
https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends
Anyone have any idea how to order the list by user name? Because it doesn't by default. There's nothing in the documentation.

Answer 1

we do this in several apps just by sorting in javascript.
function sortByName(a, b) {
var x = a.name.toLowerCase();
var y = b.name.toLowerCase();
return ((x < y) ? -1 : ((x > y) ? 1 : 0));
}
var _friend_data = null
function lazy_load_friend_data(uid) {
if (_friend_data == null) {
FB.api('/me/friends', function(response) {
_friend_data = response.data.sort(sortByName);
}
)
}
}

Answer 2

Figured out a solution. Eventually, we'll probably be able to order graph results. For now, I'm just doing this (javascript). Assuming that I got "fb_uid" from my PHP session:
var friends = FB.Data.query("SELECT name, uid FROM user WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1={0}) ORDER BY name", parseInt(fb_uid));
friends.wait(function(rows){
console.log(rows);
});

Answer 3

I think the whole OpenGraph API is still in a bit of a transitional stage from FB Connect. In any case, I would just do a good old order-by query in FQL, which you can still use. I can't imagine it will be too hard to change once the open graph way of doing this gets established.
This very good tutorial shows you how to do it:
http://thinkdiff.net/facebook/php-sdk-graph-api-base-facebook-connect-tutorial/
$fql = "select name, hometown_location, sex, pic_square from user where uid=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx";
$param = array(
'method' => 'fql.query',
'query' => $fql,
'callback' => ''
);
$fqlResult = $facebook->api($param);

Answer 4

What is the problem if you do it on caller side. That means, after you get all friends from that graph API, you can put all of them into a sorted data structure and then display all of them:)

Answer 5

Using FQL in one call.
SELECT uid, name FROM user WHERE uid IN
(SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = me())
ORDER BY name ASC

Answer 6

for me a simple asort($friends); worked fine ;)

Answer 7

$friends = $facebook->api('me/friends');
foreach ($friends as $key=>$value) {
sort($value);
foreach ($value as $fkey=>$fvalue) {
echo "<img src='https://graph.facebook.com/".$fvalue[id]."/picture' width='50' height='50' title='".$fvalue[name]."' />";
}
}

Answer 8

Building off of #MainSocial's answer, but sorting by last then first name, instead of first name only:
function sortByName(a, b) {
var fn = function(x) { return x.name.toLowerCase(); };
var ln = function(x) { return x.last_name.toLowerCase(); };
if(ln(a) == ln(b)){
if(fn(a) == fn(b)) {
return 0;
}
return (fn(a) < fn(b)) ? -1 : 1;
}
return (ln(a) < ln(b)) ? -1 : 1;
}
function getFriendsList() {
FB.api('/me/friends', {fields: 'name,id,last_name'}, function(response) {
var friends = response.data.sort(sortByName);
for (i=0; i<friends.length; i++) {
$('body').append(friends[i].name + ' - ' + friends[i].id + '<br>');
}
});
}
getFriendsList()

Answer 9

private function _compareFacebookFriends($a, $b)
{
return strcasecmp($a['name'], $b['name']);
}
public function sortFacebookFriendsArray(&$array)
{
usort($array, '_compareFacebookFriends');
}
/* Add here $facebook's initialization. Use Facebook PHP SDK */
$fbFriends = $facebook->api('/me/friends');
sortFacebookFriendsArray($fbFriends);