Introduction to Facebook Python API

Social Network and Applications, 2011

LittleQ, The Department of Computer Science, NCCU

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Objectives

Learn the concepts of Facebook API

Learn how to play with Facebook Graph
API

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Core Topics

Facebook Developers website

Graph API
Facebook Python SDK
Resources

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Facebook Developers

Provide you online documentations

Forum for discussion
Management of your applications

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Where is it?

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Social Plugins

Like Button, Send Button, Login Button

Comments
Your Friends
Activity Feed, Live Stream

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Is That What You Want?

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Graph API
Response Data

Aggregate Information

Access Token

Request Data

Application

Graph API

Facebook Database

Facebooks core
Social graph
Connections

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Graph Model

Composed of objects and connections

Identify entities and relationships by id
Data will be stored with smallest spaces
and keep being updated

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Object Model
information from graph API
without access token

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Graph Model
information from graph API
with access token

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Connection Model

All of the object in the Facebook social graph are connected

to each other via connections

Objects are just like entities while connections are like

relationship

For example, users, pages and groups are objects and likes,
friends and feeds are connections

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Connection Model

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Access to Graph

HTTP(S) Graph API

SDKs

Javascript SDK
iOS SDK
Android SDK
PHP SDK
Python SDK

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

HTTP(S) Graph API

RESTful HTTP request & response

Response data-type: JSON
Access URL: graph.facebook.com

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

HTTP(S) Graph API

http://graph.facebook.com/<id-or-username>

Request information of an object with id or username

id-or-username can be me with the access token

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

HTTP(S) Graph API

http://graph.facebook.com/littleq0903

Result:
{
"id": "1681390745",
"name": "Colin Su",
"first_name": "Colin",
"last_name": "Su",
"link": "https://www.facebook.com/littleq0903",
"username": "littleq0903",
"gender": "male",
"locale": "en_US"
}

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Access Token

A long string stands for the authentication of users

Temporary
The information behind the access token

user id
app id
expired time
secret

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Get Access Token

GetMyAccess
http://getmyaccess.heroku.com

It requires a permission called

oine_access, so this token can be valid
for a long time

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

HTTP(S) Graph API

Access token should be transferred as a

HTTP GET variable

http://graph.facebook.com/littleq0903?access_token=...

More information:
developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/
api/

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Python SDK

Let you access all features of the Graph API

Thats all, lets play!

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Python SDK

https://github.com/facebook/python-sdk
Designed to support Graph API and FB
Javascript SDK (You will learn in the future)

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Graph

Depends your access token

Everyone will have their own graph, could
be unique

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Graph API Class

Fetch the graph by implement it

import facebook
graph = facebook.GraphAPI()
user = graph.get_object(littleq0903)

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Authentication
my_profile = graph.get_object(me)

Graph can be implemented with an access

token
graph = GraphAPI(ACCESS_TOKEN)

And the perspective of the graph will be

dierent

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Graph Methods

get_object, get_objects
get_connections
put_object
put_wall_post, put_comment, put_like
delete_object

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Demo

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Homework

Fetch a kind of data on the FB Graph

Do some statistics on it
Dont Copy from others

Introduction to
Facebook PY API

Q&A Time
Thanks for your listening

Introduction to
Facebook PY API