Question

I’m trying to use the Graph API and the PHP SDK for Facebook to try and return the current users name, but I’m only having luck with it displaying my name. This is pretty straight forward and someone that knows the Graph API shouldn’t have any problem helping me out just by looking at the code I’m using.

require 'facebook.php';

$appid=get_post_meta($thisID,'_EFBPDAppID',true);
$appsec=get_post_meta($thisID,'_EFBPDAppSec',true);
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
  'appId'  => $appid,
  'secret' => $appsec,
  'cookie' => true
));
$user = $facebook->getUser();
if ($user) {
  try {
    // Proceed knowing you have a logged in user who's authenticated.
    $user_profile = $facebook->api('/me');
  } catch (FacebookApiException $e) {
    error_log($e);
    $user = null;
  }
}

And then I use this: echo $user_profile['name']; to display the users name, but it is only displaying my name. On any other profile it just shows where that variable is as blank. On my profile, it shows my name. I also used print_r($user); and it is displaying my ID, but for any other profile it displays 0.

Do users need to authenticate themselves or should there already be a session with this info? How do I get that session info if there is one?

Anyone who can help out I would be very grateful. Thanks.

Answer 1

For security and privacy as well, Facebook users must login and allow the current application to have access to their account information. You can accomplish this using different SDK. Most people use Javascript but I persoally prefer PHP. As simple implementation in HTML is shown below:

<a href="<?php echo $this->facebook->getLoginUrl(array('next' => "http://www.yourdomain.com/facebooklogin_success", 'req_perms' => 'email,read_stream,publish_stream,offline_access'))?>">Login to Facebook</a>

It will generate something like:

<a href="https://www.facebook.com/login.php?api_key=1234567890&cancel_url=http%3A%2F%2Fyourdomain.com/facebooklogin_cancel.php%2F&display=page&fbconnect=1&next=http%3A%2F%2Fyourdomain.com/facebooklogin_success.php&return_session=1&session_version=3&v=1.0&req_perms=email%2Cread_stream%2Cpublish_stream%2Coffline_access">Login to Facebook</a>

you should be able to access the user’s information after that process using Graph API.

$fbuser = $facebook->api('/me');
echo "Hello ".$fbuser['name'];

Let me know if works for you.