Facebook API Javascript: document.write() doesn't work? - facebook-graph-api

Question

I started having a look into Facebook API today. I couldn' say enough how ugly and totally unintuitive it is, at least its Javascript implementation. Anyway, here's the two things I found:
a. I struggled whole day getting 'undefined' messages after properly loggin and getting an access_toekn, now when I tried to write response.first_name after calling FB.api ('/me') I got 'undefined' messages..... Well, I burnt my brain until I got someone here in stackoverflow that said the access token should HAVE to be passed in the call! But you can't find THIS CLEARLY specified in the FB official documentation, it's not even mentioned, not even parameter is shown. So this works:
FB.api('/me', {access_token: taccesstokenvalue}, function(response) {
alert(response.first_name); });
b. now, if I change alert() by document.write() , well, it just does nothing.
c. console.log() never worked out, I Tried on chrome, firefox, opera. Nothing
Why can't I use document.write? I need to verbosely write a lot of things coming out from the API, how can I do it ?
Thanks!!

Answer 1

Well, I found out a solution I think. Hope it helps other people...
I solved it this way:
a. create a form on top of the body area, with hidden field called hAPIresponse and hAccessToken
b. instead of trying to dump the API response right inside the function() as in the code above, fill the hidden fields with what the API returns, concatenating fields one after another if needed, like this:
FB.api('/me', {access_token: taccesstokenvalue}, function(response) {
document.getElementById("hAPIresponse").value="first name:" + response.first_name;
document.getElementById("hAccessToken").value="access token:" + taccesstokenvalue;
});
*here I didn't concatenate anything, just got the first_name property from the API
c. taccesstokenvalue variable comes from previously retrieving it from the URL or you can retrieve it directly through the API. Here comes the manual approach:
function Mid(str, start, len)
{
// Make sure start and len are within proper bounds
if (start < 0 || len < 0) return "";
var iEnd, iLen = String(str).length;
if (start + len > iLen)
iEnd = iLen;
else
iEnd = start + len;
return String(str).substring(start,iEnd);
}
var taccesstoken=window.location.href;
var tvecaux=taccesstoken.split('access_token=');
var taccesstokenvalue=Mid(tvecaux[1],0, tvecaux[1].indexOf('&',0) );
As far as I saw, when you get into the FB.api() call the code CONTINUES TO EXECUTE below the FB.API() call and not through the function(response). This one is triggered asynchronously by its own will, when it thinks it's better to finish :) It seems it's so complicated for FB developers adding a sync=true/false property in the FB.Init() so people used to sync coding won't pull their hairs out of their heads as I did..
Hope it helps somebody, I spent nearly 36 hours trying to do something so simple and stupid like calling an API and retrieving a value from it...
Again, this API couldn't be less intuitive, I can't say it enough. I can't imagine what I will find when trying to pull coments to FB Post replies or even trying to interact with the FB chat