I am using the graph API to retrieve information and I have stumbled upon an issue where the Graph API won't return any information. The page I am referring to http://facebook.com/JubilationDanceMinistry which one can publicly access and see, however when I go to the Graph API URL: http://graph.facebook.com/JubilationDanceMinistry it is denied. I understand that Facebook explains this issue by saying it is by design.
We deliberately do not return a more specific exception for this case; the error message covers invalid IDs, non-existent objects, deleted objects, objects which are not visible to the caller due to demographic restrictions, objects not visible because the owner of the content has set privacy settings which exclude the caller, content not visible because the owner of the content has blocked the caller, because the owner of the content has disabled platform apps from accessing any information about their account, etc. (emphasis added)
So the reason is most likely that platform apps access has been disabled, however I see no setting for this anywhere, so I doubt this is the case. Does anyone have any advice what is going wrong here?
Thanks.
The page I am referring to http://facebook.com/JubilationDanceMinistry which one can publicly access and see
Not really – when I click on that link, I get taken to the FB home page, although being logged in to Facebook. So I think it’s fair to assume that this page is not publicly accessible, resp. that there are access restrictions in place (based on country maybe, because age and alcohol restriction should not keep me from accessing it).
And in those cases, you can only get access with a user access token – because that’s the only way for Facebook to verify that the requester is allowed to see the content.
Related
I would like to access other users public data to show in my website when they configure the page by their username/id.
It means I will create an app on FB/Instagram side and with the help of this app's access token I would like to fetch public data of other user.
Is this scenario valid now? Earlier it was possible but I am not sure now with changes in policies. Even the documents are not clear enough which can say it's possible or not?
Has anyone tried this out recently?
Users: Only data of users who specifically authorized your App is available, depending on the authorized permissions. It does not matter if data of user profiles is public or not, you have to get permission from each user separately.
Pages: If you want to get data of pages you don´t own, you have to go through a review process with your App to get access to "Page Public Content": https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/review/feature/#reference-PAGES_ACCESS
That´s for Facebook, about Instagram you can just hit the docs (as well): https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api/business-discovery
My number one recommendation, in this case, is Facebook API or Instagram API from Data365. I may be considered biased since it is the tool I work for, but it is really a reliable tool you can get public profile data by users ID or username.
Of course, you can use the official Facebook/Instagram APIs for searching all public objects (post, user, page, event, group, place, check-in). But note, the official API has a number of restrictions. Andyrandy has already described them in his answer. Compared with official APIs, we do not have such restrictions.
Besides, our APIs provide such unique features as gender and age recognition (via face photos) along with identification of post reactions that give a competitive advantage in obtained analytics. Data365 APIs also enable developers to create monitoring tasks for a one-time or auto data update. And above all, we do not break the law but only provide web scraping within the legal framework.
I am using an external server to retrieve events from multiple Facebook Pages. In about 1% of all cases, I get an error of the following type:
Unsupported get request. Object with ID '...' does not exist, cannot be loaded due to missing permissions, or does not support this operation. Please read the Graph API documentation at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api
The common link I've found between the Pages that aren't working is that they are kind of private: if you log out of Facebook, you can't access their page, even though you can access other pages.
I am using an App Access Token to do this. Is there a way to access these Pages' events anyway?
UPDATE
I've found some explanation in the Facebook Docs.
Permissions
For pages that are published, you need:
An app or user access token to view fields from fully public pages.
A user access token to view fields from restricted pages that this person is able to view (such as those restrict to certain demographics like location or age, or those only viewable by Page admins).
A page access token can also be used to view those restricted fields.
This probably means that these particular pages aren't "fully public pages". Is there still some work around?
first time on stackoverflow. Was wondering about this problem I am having as mentioned in the title, my application cannot retrieve any data via the API for any profiles that are non-related in anyway (no mutual friends either). Is this a known thing due to privacy settings or permissions?
Thanks!
This is the rules you have to know, for example 100007110730790 is a non-friend id:
Rule 1. If the user turn platform Off:
Facebook API wouldn't work at all:
Rule 2. If the platform is ON and user 100007110730790 does not provide user_status permission for your app, you can get the feed with have tagged with you:
Updates:
if you are using your apps(not graph API explorer default app, this app wouldn't include activity feed!), you can also get public activity feed(add life event, change language, so on, even though he/she doesn't use the app at all!):
Update 10 jan 2014:
shared_story is included on this rule.
Rule 3. If the platform is ON and user 100007110730790 does provide user_status permission for your app, you can get the status feed even though non-friend!:
And using FQL:
So, for albums/photos is the same, the non friend need to grant user_photos permission to the same APP.
Yes, I guess. In any ways you shouldn't be able to retrieve something that is not normally visible to you. Looking aroudn Stackoverflow there are multiple threads with similar queries, so it seems like a known limitation.
I'm able to fetch my friends list using Facebook API (which requires me to log into my FB account) and I'm trying to show my friends list to other people visit my site.
I've tried using Twitter and its quite simple. https://api.twitter.com/1/friends/ids.json?cursor=-1&screen_name=codef0rmer returns my followers ids.
Is that possible using Facebook API, If yes, How to do that?
To access the /friends connection you need a valid access token for the current session. This means you can't access this connection for other users
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/friend/
This means that unless you get a users friends and store them in your database, you won't be able to do this. ( Unless you use longer living access tokens (I say longer living as offline access is being deprecated)
Saying this, I'm not sure if you are allowed to store this information. I know friendslists aren't allowed to be shown to other users so this is potentially dangerous territory on facebook TOS. The privacy policy is here https://developers.facebook.com/policy/ but I think this is something you may need to clarify with Facebook directly as it looks like a slightly grey area
I found a very similar question here: Actions do not appear on timeline, but the solutions offered there are not working for me.
I created a custom graph action and a custom graph object through my Facebook application, and the process of publishing seems to be working fine. When I post the data using the JavaScript SDK with my access token and the object ID, the Facebook API returns the ID of the action, which I can then access on the graph. This side of things is clearly working, since accessing the object via the graph with my app's access token returns all the information it is supposed to.
However, I see no record of this action on Facebook itself; not on my app's timeline, not on the aggregation I set up for this action. The solutions offered in the link above entail double-checking the validity of the meta tags, which I did using the debugger, and also ensuring that there are no URLs within the meta tags that are inaccessible, which is also not the case. Is there anything else that could prevent these actions from showing up on the timeline?
Thanks!
There can be some permission error for facebook (and thus global users) for some url. If you get the action response id, it has to be in your facebook timeline at least (not in others excluding the developers and testers of your app) and it really occurs almost real time.
PS: If you found a similar questions elsewhere, please try to go on with the discussion there instead of creating a duplicate question.