Question

Right now, as far as I know, the Facebook Graph API lets you add a location to an event as a string value. Users are able to add location data to events manually though, by specifying a Facebook place or an address, and it looks like Facebook natively uses Bing maps to display the location. Does anyone know if there are any plans to update the API to let developers add location data properly to events?

Answer 1

The API already supports location data.

Facebook will display the map correctly if you specify a location_id which could be the ID of a place page

Here is a code example…

        $facebook->setFileUploadSupport(true);
        $event = array(
            'name' => stripslashes ($name),
            'description' => stripslashes ($description),
            'start_time' => $start_time,
            'end_time' => $end_time,
            'privacy_type' => $privacy,
            'location_id' => $location_id
        ); 
        $event[basename($flyer_file)] = '@' . realpath($flyer_file);

        try {
            $result = $facebook->api('me/events','post',$event);
        } catch (FacebookApiException $e) {
            $error = "Facebook Error: $e";
        }