Question

What is the best way to count a Facebook user’s friends…

I’m currently using (PHP):

$data = $facebook->api('/me/friends');
$friends_count = count($data['data']);

and its very slow… (about 2 secs)

Answer 1

Querying the facebook api sends a request to facebook. Because its a common http-request this Probably takes most of the time. There is usually no way around it. If you need the values more often, you should cache them somewhere

if (file_exists($cacheFile)) {
  $data = file_get_contents($cachefile);
} else {
  $data = $facebook->api('/me/friends');
  file_put_contents($cacheFile, $data);
}
$friends_count = count($data['data']);

Remember to update the cache file from time to time.