Question

I encounter something annoying while playing around with the facebook graph API. I’m using fb_graph which is a ruby wrapper for the facebook sdk. I’m not sure if this issue I encounter is a limitation of the facebook sdk or I should contact the owner of fb_graph.

So, using fb_graph, this is how I would connect to a user:

jane = FbGraph::User.fetch('janeid', :access_token => "janeaccesstoken")

jane.friends will list all of jane’s friends. However, if I try to get jane’s friends birthday or email, it returns nil. In other words,

jane.friends[0].birthday => nil

But, I can access friends[0] birthday this way:

bill = FbGraph::User.fetch(jane.friends[0].id, :access_token => "janeaccesstoken")

In other words, if I wanted a list of all jane’s friends’ birthdates, I cannot do this:

@jane.friends.each do |friend|
  puts friend.birthday
end

instead, it will have to be something like this

@jane.friends.each do |friend|
  friendname = FbGraph::User.fetch(friend.id, :access_token => "janeaccesstoken")
  puts friendname.birthday
end

I guess it’s not too bad but it does make me wonder why this is the case, because actually only some info is nil. Name, for example, is not.

@jane.friends.each do |friend|
  puts friend.name # => works!
end

Answer 1

The answer is here:
https://github.com/nov/fb_graph/issues/237.