facebook-explorer

facebook-explorer

Promise based library for performing various searches on Facebook (using Facebook Graph API). It utilizes various optimisation techniques to limit number of requests and amount of transfered data to minimum.

Table of contents

• Quick start
• Usage
• Options
• Methods
• Searching
• Known limitations
• Copyright and license

Quick start

Several quick start options are available:

Download the latest build

Development, unminified code

• facebook.explorer.js

Production, minified code

• facebook.explorer.min.js

Install from Bower

bower install facebook-explorer --save

Install from Npm

npm install facebook-explorer --save

Using Git repository

To clone the repository, use

git clone https://github.com/karenpommeroy/facebook-explorer.git

Build sources

grunt build

Done!

Usage

facebook-explorer comes as an UMD module which means you can use it as an AMD or CommonJS module as well as a standalone library.

Include as a module (require.js):

var FBExplorer = require("facebook-explorer"); // or whatever module name you assigned

Including files (standalone):

<script src="/path/to/facebook.explorer.js"></script>
<script>
	FBExplorer.doSomething();
</script>

Initialization

Before performing any operations you will need to provide your Application ID in order to get access to Facebook Graph API. Step by step instruction how to obtain one for your app can be found on Facebook for Developers

Once obtained id has to be set by invoking init method with appId (string) parameter:

FBExplorer.init({ appId: "YOUR_APP_ID" });

You can change it later by calling:

FBExplorer.setAppId("YOUR_APP_ID");

Options

facebook-explorer can be configured by invoking init() method with options object as it's parameter.

Here is the explanation of possible options:

Option	Type	Description	Default	Options
appId	string	Facebook Application ID
version	string	Facebook Graph API version to use	"v2.9"
profile	string	Name of the default search profile (explained below)	"brief"	"basic", "brief", "extended", "full"
since	string	Default lower limit for time based searches	"now"
days	int	Default upper limit for time based searches (in days)	30
method	string	Default algorithm used when searching for events	"chunk"	"chunk", "multiple", "least"
limit	int	Default limit for Facebook API requests	100

Search profiles

Normally when using Facebook Graph API we often have to specify fields that will be returned in reponse. To make this easier facebook-explorer comes with few search profiles that have predefined field sets associated with them. Just a handy shorthand in place of listing all fields manually.

There are four profiles: "basic", "brief", "extended" and "full".

Profile "basic" is the most compact while "full" contains all possible fields (others fall somewhere in between) Here is the list of fields included in each profile listed by type of searched item:

"basic":

• For each search type: id, name

"brief":

• places: category, description, id, location, name, picture
• pages: category, description, id, name, picture
• events: category, cover, description, id, end_time, name, place, start_time

"extended":

• places: category, description, hours, id, location, name, phone, picture, website
• pages: category, cover, description, id, end_time, name, place, start_time
• events: attending_count, category, cover, description, id, interested_count, end_time, maybe_count, name, place, start_time, type

"full":

• events: all possible fields as specified by Event fields description in FB Graph API
• places: all possible fields as specified by Place fields in FB Graph API
• pages: all possible fields as specified by Page fields in FB Graph API

FBExplorer.findPlaces({
	keywords: "Agrestic Shopping Mall",
    profile: "full"
});

Of course you can also specify fields manually without using profiles. To do this just include fields attribute (string) in your search options (nested queries are also allowed). If specified together with profile this attribute will take precedence and profile will be ignored.

FBExplorer.findPlaces({
	keywords: "Majestic Town Hall",
    fields: "id,name,photos.limit(1),location{latitude,longitude}"
});

Methods

void init(object config)

Initialises facebook-explorer should be called before any other methods.

FBExplorer.init({
	appId: "6661097367666",
    version: "v2.9",
    profile: "brief"
    since: "now",
    days: 30
});

string getAppId()

Returns currently set application id.

var appId = FBExplorer.getAppId();

void setAppId(string appId)

Sets new application id.

FBExplorer.setAppId("6661097367666");

Promise findEvents(object searchOptions, function partialResultCallback)

Performs search for events and returns promise for the result. First parameter is required and represents object containg search attributes. Second optional parameter is a function that will be invoked whenever new results are available.

var searchOptions = {
    center: {
    	latitude: 51.12456,
        longitude: -52.45444
    },
    distance: 100,
    keywords: "My Event Name",
    profile: "brief",
    until: "2017-12-02",
    sort: "time",
    order: "asc",
    methid: "multiple"
};

function partialResultsCallback(result, hasMore) {
	console.log(result);
};

FBExplorer.findEvents(searchOptions, partialResultsCallback)
.then(function(result) {
	// do something with the result
};

Promise findPages(object searchOptions, function partialResultCallback)

Performs search for pages and returns promise for the result. First parameter is required and represents object containg search attributes. Second optional parameter is a function that will be invoked whenever new results are available.

var searchOptions = {
    fields: "id,name",
    keywords: "My Page",
    sort: "name",
    order: "desc"
};

function partialResultsCallback(result, hasMore) {
	console.log(result);
};

FBExplorer.findPages(searchOptions, partialResultsCallback)
.then(function(result) {
	// do something with the result
};

Promise findPlaces(object searchOptions, function partialResultsCallback)

Performs search for places and returns promise for the result. First parameter is required and represents object containg search attributes. Second optional parameter is a function that will be invoked whenever new results are available.

var searchOptions = {
    center: {
    	latitude: 51.12456,
        longitude: -52.45444
    },
    distance: 500,
    keywords: "My Place",
    profile: "full",
    since: "2017-01-01",
    sort: "distance",
    order: "asc"
};

function partialResultsCallback(result, hasMore) {
	console.log(result);
};

FBExplorer.findPlaces(searchOptions, partialResultsCallback)
.then(function(result) {
	// do something with the result
};

Searching

Search Options

Possible search options vary a little depending on what are you actually searching for.

Option	Type	Description	Details
fields	string	Comma separated field namse to be included in results	Possible items differ with search
keywords	string	Keyword to search for (searches name, description)	Required when searching for pages
profile	string	Name of predefined fields profile to use	check [SearchProfiles](Search Profiles)
sort	string	Determines how should the results be sorted	check Sorting
order	string	Sorting order	"asc" or "desc"

Below options are available only when searching for items that have location attributes (places, events).

Option	Type	Description	Details
center	object	Center point containing latitude (float) and longitude (float)	Coordinates in EPSG:4326
distance	int	Search radius, distance from center (in metres)	Shouldn't exceed 50000
cityId	string	City id as defined by Facebook

Below options are available only when searching only for events.

Option	Type	Description	Details
since	string	Lower time boundary, Unix timestamp or strtotime data value as accepted by FB Graph API.	Default is "now"
until	string	Upper time boundary, Unix timestamp or strtotime data value as accepted by FB Graph API.
method	string	Type of search algorithm to use	check [SearchAlgorithms(Search Algorithms)

Search algorithms

After Facebook deprecated FQL support (since v2.1) searching for events by location became a little bit tricky. There are number of ways that such a search can be approached using FB Graph API alone and because of that facebook-explorer allows you to choose between three different algorithms. Each one has it's advantages and disadvantages and execution time can differ significantly under specific conditions.

Least number of requests ("least") - performs search using the least amount of requests possible but each response can be very large

• search for places according to search parameters
• include events information in response (using nested queries)

Multiple small requests ("multiple") - performs many smaller requests, each response is optimized in size

• search for places according to search parameters
• make a separate request for each place to obtain associated events data

Chunked requests ("chunked") - this one falls somewhere in between the above utilizing nested queries

• search for places according to search parameters
• make request for events from multiple places at once (combining up to 50 places per one request)

I noticed that sometimes a place may contain events that are hosted elsewhere (place location is different than the event location). Such events are filtered out if their location does not match specified search parameters.

Each algorithm removes duplicates before returning the results.

Sorting

Results can be returned in a specific order and this is determined by providing sort (string) and order (string) attributes along with search options.

You can sort results using sorts:

• "name" - results are sorted alphabetically by name
• "distance" - results are ordered depending on their distance from center point, applies only to items with location attributes (places, events)
• "time" - results are sorted by their start time, applies only to events

Order can be one of two possibilities: "asc" or "desc".

Partial results

In some cases when searches are complicated (i.e. cover very large area or time range) there are multiple request sent to get the complete data and sometimes waiting for all of the results to be ready may take some time.

Nobody likes to wait so facebook-explorer provides a way to overcome this problem to some degree. Each find method has an optional second parameter that is a function with following definition:

function partialResultsCallback(Array result, bool hasMore) {
	// do something with partial results
};

This is called a partial result callback and will be called each time a new portion of data is available without having to wait for the complete item. First parameter contains new portion of data that was returned in the current search and second informs you if there will be more data available. This way it is for example possible to display some data imemdiately once it appears and load remaining in the background.

Known limitations

• The Graph API has some "instabilities" with search results. It's possible that the amount of results returned can vary between calls within seconds
• Rate limiting will apply, but it may happen only in rare cases and you should experience no call blocks within a reasonable amount of service requests. Be aware that the way this library works, allows for performing searched with potentially hundreds of (counted) Graph API calls per request to /events.

Copyright and license

Licensed under MIT license.

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