Facebook Graph API and Quartz Composer

incubo's picture

This might be (and actually is) old information, but I think that it's better to publish this anyways. I managed to figure this out today.

Here is a simple example of how to get information from Facebook to Quartz Composer. This composition gets the names and profile pictures of your (or anyone else's for that matter) friends. For me it seems, that it doesn't get all of my FB friends to QC, but 717 out of 742 friends came just fine. It might be that this is because of the rather complex privacy policies in FB.

You will need your Facebook id and an access token to get it working. You will get both of these by logging in to FB and going to Facebook Graph API Explorer (http://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer). The Explorer is a great way to find out what kind of information you can get from FB. The access token you get from the FB Graph API Explorer expires quite quickly, but I think that there is some way to get a long time access token. Not sure how just yet.

For me https://developers.facebook.com/docs/getting-started/graphapi/ seems a good way to start tinkering with Facebook.

The composition uses DataTools, NetworkTools and FileTools from Kineme as well as JSON to Structure from smokers (http://kineme.net/composition/smokris/JSONStructure).

So, shall we re-visualize social media then?

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FacebookFriends.qtz12.89 KB

incubo's picture
Re: Facebook Graph API and Quartz Composer

Not "smokers", but smokris of course! Auto correction...

incubo's picture
Re: Facebook Graph API and Quartz Composer

incubo wrote:
The access token you get from the FB Graph API Explorer expires quite quickly, but I think that there is some way to get a long time access token. Not sure how just yet.

After quite some googling and reading I found a working and easy(!) way to get long-lasting FB access token (and even forever lasting to pull FB page information). Here you go:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12168452/long-lasting-fb-access-token...