The FB Graph API shows how I can search for all users named "Mark" anywhere in the world:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=mark&type=user
but I would like to be able to search, for example, by location and interest, like all users in Los Angeles who like Soccer.
I looked through the API documentation, and forums, but although I imagine this would be a common question (whether it's possible or not), I couldn't find anything.
Thanks for any help.
The current implementation of the Graph API makes these types of searches impossible.
First, the search query structure is dependent on the type of resource being searched. It is not coincidence that the majority of search queries in the documentation only include one search term and do not allow you to restrict the fields being searched. Outside of a limited subset of types (like Places), it is not possible to use multiple terms and it may not be possible to get results for the fields you want to search (e.g. you can't search for Pages by location).
Second, all methods of the Graph API follow Facebook's permissions. If you look at the documentation on User objects, you will note that both the location field and the likes connection require extended permissions (user_location and user_likes respectively) in order to access them. Since both of these fields are private by default, there is no way to find users with a location in Los Angeles, or who like soccer.
I suspect that this is because the Graph API's purpose is not to allow programmers to do granular searches over Facebook's userbase, but to "promote rich social applications".
Related
I'm trying to understand the best approach to create article items in my sitecore 7.2 project.
Basically I'm considering 2 options:
1 - Create an article as a page;
2 - Create an article as a Site Data Item.
1 - Create article pages under a given page (i.e. My Articles). This way each article would have a specific URL out of the box, easier to understand in Content Authors' point of view;
2 - Have a specific folder (i.e. Article Folder) under Site Data. This way we don't need to have a page for each article - I was thinking to have a single Article page that would render the article fields. However this would require more work in terms of URLs, navigation, etc.
Is there any other ideas? Am I missing something? I was also having a look at Buckets...
Thank you
I'm going to disagree with Marek and recommend you opt for option 2.
Storing your articles in folder under a Data node allows those items to be datasourced. This is the principle Sitecore was built on. You can then surface those articles in a number of interesting ways via Widgets such as Promo Panels, prompting the user to click through to read about the article without duplicating its data and requiring Content Editors to manage data multiple times.
It even supports multiple sites, so the Articles can be used in other sites you may add to your Sitecore instance in the future.
As you state it will require extra work in terms of Urls and Navigation but it can be achieved via Sitecore's Wild Card Item and you an even use a great open sourced Module from Sitecore's Marketplace to complete 90% of the work for you. See links below for more information.
You can still implement Marek's point of applying Presentation Details once on the Standard Values of the Wild Cart Item you create. If you are using Sitecore 7 and above you can store all your articles in a Bucket so if you have lots of articles they are stored and searchable in a meaningful way.
http://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/getting-to-know-sitecore/posts/2011/09/wildcards-and-data-driven-urls.aspx
https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/Wildcard_module.aspx
In a standard one instance setup the easiest implementation is to create articles as pages.
In Sitecore you want to limit the items in a folder to 100 or less which is best practice to keep the content editors experience optimal.
This then leads you needing a folder structure and a couple options:
Manually maintain a folder structure for your articles. For example articles/year/month/day. This gives your editors the most control over the folder structure and allow them to navigate the articles in a more traditional way via a visible folder structure.
Use a bucket which automatically generates the folder structure and hides this complexity from the content editor. This takes the manual folder creation and maintenance away from the content editor and are automatically generated based on the configuration you set out for your bucket. The folders wont be visible to the content editor so they will be forced to search in the bucket for any articles rather then navigate the folders.
Use the shared source News mover module (https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/News_mover.aspx). This takes a different approach to the above. It works via a traditional folder structure however it generates folders and moves the item on save based on the date field in the article. So the news mover handles the generation of folders however you will still need to check your not exceeding 100 items per folder again for performance when opening folders with large amounts of items.
With all solutions you must still consider the URLs for your articles as they will include the folder structure by default. This is not always acceptable. I prefer to remove the folder structure from the URL. For this you need to create a custom linkProvider and a custom HttpRequestProcessor. Firstly the linkprovider allows you to ensure the new URL is always created and displayed in your site as you want. Next the HttpRequestProcessor ensures that when navigating to the shortened URL Sitecore recognises it as a valid URL and presents the correct page.
By excluding the folder structure from the URL it also adds the additional benefit that the URL is not dependent on the structure. This means editors can change that folder structure and not need to create redirect items to ensure SEO rankings or users bookmarks are not lost.
The cleaner data model is to use the wildcard approach for the URLs and centralize the storage of articles data in a bucket of datasources. This will give you optimum performance and reuse of the data.
However, this isn't how an author thinks about their website. When they use the system, they tend to navigate to the area where they would view articles and try to create a new one there. Authors tend to think in 'pages', so try to hide whatever data model you are using from them and give them the ability to edit the page with Experience Editor.
Some developers try to optimize too far and forget that the authoring experience is likely the most important piece of the delivered solution. The author doesn't care how efficiently you stored the data, only that they can edit it easily and publish efficiently. Whatever model supports that for your author base is how you should implement it.
My recommendation is a page-based approach where the author creates the URL structure with folders and items, something they understand. Then, if you really need to, you can have the primary article data be a datasource-driven component on the page. The user gets to use all the tools they are familiar with (Experience Editor,preview navigation) but you can still store the raw data in a centralized folder. You could then theoretically swap out the article data using DMS rules, or hide information based on authentication or membership status.
Go with approach 1: article is a page.
Define all your presentation details on Article Page template __Standard Values. All new articles will get them. And you can change some of the presentation details for your chosen articles if you want.
If you know that you'll have lot of articles, think about year/month/day folder structure, e.g. articles/2015/06/12.
Approach 2 doesn't give you anything - you still need to have an item for every article. And as you wrote, it would require additional coding which is not required.
I am currently working on an app (not live yet) that will allow users to create projects and set the location of each.
I originally added an autocomplete field that worked with the Google maps lookup to help the user type in the location and also it would find the latitude and longitude of the place/location and show it on a map.
At this point I was saving the location, latitude and longitude to database fields.
This made the user experience quite straight forward.
However, I now think this idea of storing the autocompleted location violates 10.1.3 of Google Maps T&Cs.
I need to include the locations in my list page and Google allows short term caching for performance purposes but surely that would mean I would need to update the cache or something for each entry at least every 30 days which isn't really an option.
This would also mean that the location data belongs to Google which limits any future use of this data (an API on my site for instance).
I wondered if it would be an option to use openstreetmap data to get the full location (although I'm not sure if it can be used to provide an autocomplete facility) and then pass that to the google maps lookup so that the location provided by the openstreetmap autocomplete with looser restrictions can be saved to the database. However, even if that was all possible it could be confusing for the user if the openstreetmap autocomplete failed to find a location/place that exists on google or it was labelled differently.
I'm not sure if that's an option or not.
I am currently tending towards a plain text box with an example location shown alongside it so the user can see the extent that the location needs to be typed (ie a full address) so that when it is used to lookup the location via Google it will bring back the correct latitude and longitude but will also be informative to users when they see it on the list page.
This does mean that the location field content is ok to store in the database then but it puts more reliance on the user typing the address in correctly and if they don't type it in properly the auto lookup may fail to locate it and/or it may not be viewer-friendly on the list page.
Can anyone offer any better ways that I could help users to type in an accurate location (which could be a place with address or just an address) so that it doesn't violate the terms and conditions and allows my site to have ownership of the location?
Thanks
I'm doing a query of this form:
https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=Beshoff&fields=likes,checkins,products,name,talking_about_count,description,category&type=place¢er=37.327453,-121.813102&distance=400
I am interested in finding out the exhaustive list of fields that can be selected for a Place object.
In particular, on the facebook page for a specific place, there are often multiple categories listed which I have been unable to figure out if it's possible to retrieve using the Graph API.
e.g. On https://www.facebook.com/BeshoffInfiniti, there is an entry "Car Dealership" but the graph api call above returns "Local business".
If you leave out the "fields" attribute in your query you will get all the fields. The number of fields depends on the object type (for example owned pages vs. wiki pages)
Don't just look at the Graph API. Take a look at FQL. There are different fields available in FQL vs. the API. And yes, using the distance function you can look for places in an area.
Graph API != FQL
One thing to try is the Facebook Open Graph schema entry for Page and Place.
You'll find all the additional fields for Pages. You can think of places as a subclass of pages.
If you're curious about the types of page that might be returned, try having a look through the create a page flow.
I'm experimenting with searching places through Facebook Graph API. Actually, I'm searching for any place (i.e., "q=*&type=place") around a given center in a given distance.
I'm getting different results using different access_token (for different users using the same App). For example, place A shows up on results of one of the user but not on others.
Is it the expected behaviour? What's the rationale behind choosing the places to show to a user?
The results returned from a nearby search are Facebook pages that are places. One possibility could be that some of those pages have age restrictions and you may be searching with an access token representing, say an underaged user.
I would like to know if there is a free api that would allow me to get restaurant information for an android application. The Application is supposed to search for nearby restaurants and display to the user. The problem is that there are some criteria that the restaurants must satisfy. The specific information I need is: location, type of food (mexican, italian, burger, etc.), type of restaurant (sit-down, fast food, buffet, etc.). Would there be any api that would give me these information? I know that I can use apis like Google custom search but the problem is that the result may not include all the information I want to have on every query( type of food, type of restaurant...)
thanks
As mentioned, the Yelp! API allows you to filter based on a lot of categories. The other alternative would be the Google Places API, but that doesn't give you the sort of contextual information about the restaurant that you want.