One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#1

Post by anilchawla » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:01 PM UTC

One long, intimate month with the Facebook API
anilchawla.org

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#2

Post by anilchawla » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

I should say that I've been lurking on HN for quite some time and that this is my first post :-) One motivation for writing this post was that I was surprised to see how often the Facebook API will drop/omit data that exists and that you should be able to access. I specifically call out the Breakup Notifier app (which recently got a ton of buzz) because I don't see how apps like that can report accurate information when the underlying data is unreliable. Any thoughts or similar experiences with the Facebook API?

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#3

Post by codebaobab » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

Anil, why didn't you just ignore fields and attributes that were missing? So if education:concentration returns "CompSci" on the first call, but then is missing on the second call, don't treat that as a change. Don't consider the attribute changed until the it is present and different.

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#4

Post by soulclap » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:45 PM UTC

codebaobab wrote: post #3

Anil, why didn't you just ignore fields and attributes that were missing? So if education:concentration returns "CompSci" on the first call, but then is missing on the second call, don't treat that as a change. Don't consider the attribute changed until the it is present and different.

So what if it is missing on the first call? How many calls until you get the complete picture? And which of those results is 'the truth' and reflects the current status?

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#5

Post by soulclap » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:49 PM UTC

Good read. And a good reminder that you shouldn't (or can't) rely on documentation or a single request here and there when you decide to work with an API.

And that the amount of support and 'release cycles' (frequency of updates and fixes) is something that you should always consider when integrating another piece of software into your own system.

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#6

Post by apu » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:50 PM UTC

Nice post.

Remember ChromeSpeed? Fancy seeing you here!

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~neeraj/projects/chromespeed/

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#7

Post by anilchawla » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

codebaobab wrote: post #3

Anil, why didn't you just ignore fields and attributes that were missing? So if education:concentration returns "CompSci" on the first call, but then is missing on the second call, don't treat that as a change. Don't consider the attribute changed until the it is present and different.

Right, I also thought I could work around the issues by ignoring fluctuations in the data. The problem is knowing what is the correct baseline data. In your example, the education:concentration might be missing when you first start checking and only start appearing a long time later. Do you ignore the data when it first appears or report that the person just added another major at college (which may be true!)? This is a bigger problem with fields that people might completely add/remove instead of simply updating (e.g. relationship status). I tried baking in a time period (e.g. 24 hours) in which I ignored all changes and waited for the baseline data to become obvious, but even that didn't work because some data took even longer to re-appear. At some point I had to admit to myself that - with all these work-arounds - my simple feature had turned into a hack.

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#8

Post by plusbryan » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

anilchawla wrote: post #2

I should say that I've been lurking on HN for quite some time and that this is my first post :-) One motivation for writing this post was that I was surprised to see how often the Facebook API will drop/omit data that exists and that you should be able to access. I specifically call out the Breakup Notifier app (which recently got a ton of buzz) because I don't see how apps like that can report accurate information w…

Thanks for sharing. Your insights & warnings have been most helpful.

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#9

Post by michaelchisari » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:02 PM UTC

Great stuff, I'll keep this in mind as I build out the Appleseed Graph API. Especially good that you opened up with what you like about the Graph API, often-times articles like this skip right to the criticisms.

Re: One long, intimate month with the Facebook API

#10

Post by baffledshrimp » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

anilchawla wrote: post #2

I should say that I've been lurking on HN for quite some time and that this is my first post :-) One motivation for writing this post was that I was surprised to see how often the Facebook API will drop/omit data that exists and that you should be able to access. I specifically call out the Breakup Notifier app (which recently got a ton of buzz) because I don't see how apps like that can report accurate information w…

We run a program that monitors a significant number of Facebook Pages. It drives me crazy because every once in a while a certain attribute, like the author, is just omitted. It'll usually show up again later on.