Question

As described here (Facebook Real-time Updates – get updates for friends) I am using the facebook real time API to get updates for users’ friends. In the provided callback URL where facebook POSTs the updates to I get entries such as (replaced uid/id) :

        [ { uid: '123456',
            id: '123456',
            time: 1346075439,
            changed_fields: [ 'friends' ] },
          { uid: '654321',
            id: '654321',
            time: 1346075439,
            changed_fields: [ 'friends' ] }
        ]

I am now trying to the updated friends, however with the graph explorer tool I can’t get the updated friends only. I tried to set the ‘since’ parameter as documented here (https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/ -> Paging)

https://graph.facebook.com/123456/friends?since=1346075439

or also the ‘time’ parameter (not documented but I just tried it)

https://graph.facebook.com/123456/friends?time=1346075439

However, requests with either of the parameters still returns the whole friend list of the user

Is there any possibility how I can get only the updated friends?

Answer 1

No, the friends list is not sorted or queryable by time – if you need to detect new friends, you need to compare the list you receive from the API with the previous list you retrieved