Question

Currently experimenting with the FB GRAPH API Explorer Tool for the purpose of searching for (any) users by their first and last names.

Due to this bug (https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/331209630309433) I cannot test name searches via the Explorer, so I have instead resorted to investigating what types of data are returned when performing a search.

For this purpose, my test FQL queries are of the following format:

SELECT uid, username, first_name, last_name, sex, website, about_me , activities , email, current_location, birthday_date, books, interests, work, .... {any other field}
FROM user 
WHERE uid in ({list of known/random user ids})

I noticed that the query returns values for the fields uid, username, first_name, last_name and sex for all users, but empty/null for any others.

What causes this? Is this because these users are not my ‘FB Friends’, their permissions are set not to return these fields to the FB G API, or both, or any other reason?

Also, I have noticed that most users have on their public FB website some links/information under the section ‘Favorites > Other’ – how does this map to the FB G API and how can this be retrieved?

Any advice is appreciated.

John Smith

Answer 1

You need to set permissions for rest of the details. Only basic info of the user is available by default.

UPDATE 1

Set this, for setting the permissions.

UPDATE 2

See, you cant access the details of the users other than your friends (just basic info will be visible). For the friends, i ran the following query and I got the expected result (after setting the required permissions):

SELECT uid, username, first_name, last_name, sex, website, about_me , activities , email, current_location, birthday_date, books, interests, work
FROM user 
WHERE uid in (select uid2 from friend where uid1=me())