Question

I have a facebook app that I would like to get the total number of “likes” from. I am wondering if this is even possible.

where ID is the app’s id and ACCESS_TOKEN is the current access token for the app I have tried:

• graph.facebook.com/ID which returns the basic json information for the app but does not include likes.

• graph.facebook.com/ID/likes?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN which returns an empty tuple of data, ie. {"data":[]}. The page has been liked and this tuple doesn’t change when I like the application.

Is there any way to get the total likes for an app from facebook and if so what is the api call?

edit: if it helps to clarify the url for the page that I am trying to get likes from is http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=ID&sk=PAGE_NAME

Answer 1

It’s not currently available as easily as page likes which is a parameter of a Page object , but you can get this from the insights api with the read_insights permission

Just make a call to https://graph.facebook.com/[APP ID]/insights/page_fans/lifetime/?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

Sample return value (App ID removed):

{
  data: [
    {
      id: "[APP ID]/insights/page_fans/lifetime",
      name: "page_fans",
      period: "lifetime",
      values: [
        {
          value: 4,
          end_time: "2011-07-23T07:00:00+0000",
        },
        {
          value: 4,
          end_time: "2011-07-24T07:00:00+0000",
        },
        {
          value: 4,
          end_time: "2011-07-25T07:00:00+0000",
        },
      ]
      description: "Lifetime The total number of people who have liked your Page. (Total Count)",
    },
  ]
  paging: {
    previous: "https://graph.facebook.com/[APP ID]/insights/page_fans/lifetime?since=1311088931&until=1311348131",
    next: "https://graph.facebook.com/[APP ID]/insights/page_fans/lifetime?since=1311607331&until=1311866531",
  }
}

(In this case the number of fans has been static at 4 for the past three days, on a busier app this will fluctuate)