facebookfacebook-graph-apifacebook-fqlfql.multiquery

Get Facebook page's stream from a Global Page

I have a little problem with the Facebook api.

I am doing a very simple FQL request to get a Page's stream like this one :

SELECT post_id, type, likes, comments FROM stream WHERE source_id = X

It works just well. But, when I do the same request on "huge pages" like Coca Cola or Starbucks, all stream posts have an empty "type", "likes count" and "comments count".

I don't really understand why. I am thinking about a "Global Page" with country code error, but I just can't find information on this.

Any idea ?

Edit: just try another request to get the page global child IDs, but looks like Coca Cola and Starbucks doesn't use the Global Page system.

starbucks?fields=global_brand_children.username,global_brand_parent_page

So, any idea why my first request return empty infos when getting stream content ?

Solution

  • There is nothing wrong with "huge pages". It's only that "huge pages" have a lot of posts and shares from fans. Indeed, the stream table provides ALL the activities of the page.

    The type of a stream activity will be null when the content comes from a user. When it comes from the page owner, it will be an int. See the description of the type field on https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/stream/.

    The reason why you might get a null as a like count is that you came across a post which has the can_like or can_comment fields set to false. These posts cannot be liked or commented because they are present outside of the page (i.e. on a user timeline or on particular website) and their owner didn't allow public likes or comments (even if publicly visible). If you are going to find such activities in the stream of the page is because they tagged the page in their message or photo.

    Edit in answer to your first comment.

    Question: why doesn't the following query give back the posts from the owner of the page:

    SELECT actor_id, message 
  FROM stream 
 WHERE source_id = 40796308305 
      AND actor_id = 40796308305

    Let's see how many results this query CAN give back:

    SELECT actor_id, message 
  FROM stream 
 WHERE source_id = 40796308305

    Okay, we get 17 results. Why 17? I don't know.

    When you add AND actor_id = 40796308305 to your request, it will checks among these 17 results which ones have 40796308305 as an actor_id.

    Answer? None!

    Because it only checks the 17 first results, you'll have to indicate a LIMIT:

    SELECT actor_id, message 
  FROM stream 
 WHERE source_id = 40796308305 
      AND actor_id = 40796308305 
 LIMIT 100

    And there you get what you want.

    This is one of the Facebook API's subtlety. Documented here: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/478/