A Little More JavaScript and FaceBook Hacking

Facebook's JavaScript example is pretty minimal, so I thought I'd do a little more hacking around. I'm not a great JS programmer, so I like to unroll the function definitions.

You should grab the very minimal JS API documentation from here: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/JavaScript_Client_Library. It is the "zipped archive" link near the bottom. This guide is very unfriendly at the current time, but in general you should see that the JS equivalents of the API list at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/API replace the "." with a "_". So users.getInfo becomes users_getInfo(...).


Here's an example that uses the users_getInfo() method and some other stuff to get a user's profile information.

<!-- Output area to show the output from Facebook API -->
<textarea style="width:500px;height:300px;" id="_traceTextBox">
</textarea>
<script src="http://static.ak.facebook.com/js/api_lib/FacebookApi.debug.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">

// Create an ApiClient object, passing app's api key and
// a site relative url to xd_receiver.htm
var api = new FB.ApiClient('<your_key_here>', '/xd_receiver.htm', null);

// Get friends list
function getResults(result,exception) {
Debug.dump(api.get_session().uid,'you');
Debug.dump(result,'The stuff');
}

function getInfo(result,exception) {
Debug.dump(result,'The info');
}

// require user to login
api.requireLogin(function(exception) {
api.friends_get(null,getResults);
var myinfo='last_name,first_name,hometown_location,work_history,pic_small';
api.users_getInfo(api.get_session().uid,myinfo,getInfo);

});
</script>

You need to update this stuff above to use your application's key, as indicated.

The output of this will be something like
---------------------
you: 627774031

The stuff: {Array}
[Deleted]

The info: {Array}
[0]: {Object}
first_name: Marlon
hometown_location: {Object}
city:
state:
country:
zip:
last_name: Pierce
pic_small: http://profile.ak.facebook.com/profile6/1797/98/t627774031_2463.jpg
uid: 627774031
work_history: {Object}

friendsResult from batch execution: {Array}
[Deleted]
notificationsResults from batch: undefined
----------------------

I guessed the values for the myinfo array by looking at the big XML file example shown at http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Users.getInfo. That's the real URL for the tiny version of my FaceBook photo.

So in summary, you can use this approach to embed FaceBook profile information in your own web application. You'll of course have to do a bit of work to format all of this stuff. Note also that you can substitute another user's numeric ID in the users_getInfo() call (ie that of one of your friends). I used this to spy on Dave De Roure, who spends a lot more time on FaceBook than I do. And I won't even start on Dan Katz.

FQL and JS
Finally, note that all of the FaceBook API is basically a set of wrappers around their SQL like FQL query language. So you can, if you prefer, make custom methods out of FQL query strings. For example

var myQuery='SELECT name FROM user WHERE uid='+api.get_session().uid;
api.fql_query(myQuery,getFQLResponse);

will execute the indicated query string from JavaScript and pass it to your (developer defined) function getFQLResponse().

Groups
To list information about groups you are a member of, use the following. You can replace your uid with another UID.
api.groups_get(api.get_session().uid,null,getGroups);
api.groups_getMembers(18629081888,getGroupMembers);

In the second line, 18629081888 is the GID for the very inactive OGF Web 2.0 group.