I am trying to get to grips with the Graph API. Is i,t correctly understood that if I want to ask for my own, say friends, through code, I should
- register my application and get an app access token
- Login with my own credentials and get an user access token?
I find it difficult to grasp the concepts from the documentation.
You need to do both.
Registering your application tells Facebook where those requests are coming from. They monitor what requests your app is making to police apps that violate your terms.
Once you have that app, you personally authenticate it to get information from or post information to Facebook on your behalf. The app must ask for specific permissions and you have to grant these for it to work.