Question

Is there any way to retrieve or delete multiple Facebook request_ids in one Facebook Graph API call?

For example, if a user receives multiple requests from different people for the same app, they will be grouped as one notification and all the request_ids will be passed to the app as a comma separated list when the user accepts the notification. Is there any way to avoid having to loop through each one and individually retrieve/delete it?

Answer 1

Binyamin is correct that batch requests would probably work. However, I discovered that to fetch request data by request_ids, you can simply pass them as a comma separate list and avoid doing a batch request.

NSString *requestIds = @"123456789,987654321";
NSMutableDictionary *params = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObject:requestIds forKey:@"ids"];
[facebook requestWithGraphPath:@"" andParams:params andDelegate:self];

Your final graph URL wants to look like:

https://graph.facebook.com/?ids=REQUEST_ID1,REQUEST_ID2,REQUEST_ID3&access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

For the delete operation, I believe a batch operation is still required. When you get the request_id data back from FB from the above call, it will be an NSDictionary with each result_id as a key. You can look at each key and create a batch operation to delete them all.

NSDictionary *requests = DATA_RETURNED_FROM_FACEBOOK;
NSArray *requestIds = [requests allKeys];
NSMutableArray *requestJsonArray = [[[NSMutableArray alloc] init] autorelease];
for (NSString *requestId in requestIds) {
    NSString *request = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"{ \"method\": \"DELETE\", \"relative_url\": \"%@\" }", requestId];
    [requestJsonArray addObject:request];
}
NSString *requestJson = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"[ %@ ]", [requestJsonArray componentsJoinedByString:@", "]];
NSMutableDictionary *params = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithObject:requestJson forKey:@"batch"];
[facebook requestWithGraphPath:@"" andParams:params andHttpMethod:@"POST" andDelegate:nil];

Note that the current limit on batch requests is 50, per https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/batch/. So to be completely safe you should check the count of request_ids and if it is greater than 50, you will have to do multiple batch requests.