Tuesday, June 5, 2012

How can I retrieve the new timeline data from the API?


At the f8-conference Facebook just announced the new timeline view. This is based on the new Open-Graph model



The question is, how is this data retrieved via the API?



Retrieval should address a number of complexities:



  • The filtered nature should be just like in the online view, i.e. not everything from the ticker should show up

  • Even more, the granularity of the timeline view should be reflected just like on the webpage (more detail today, less detail in the past, but the option to dig deeper at any time)

  • The aggregation view of app data should be supported

  • The cover image should be part of the data



Right now, it is not obvious to me if this is or will be possible at all.


Source: Tips4all

2 comments:

  1. Partial answer to the fourth bullet:

    There is a new photo album called "Cover Photos" with the cover image on position 1. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to find the positioning coordinates that define the viewport on the image.

    {edit} There's now a cover field on a user which returns the cover photo and the x/y offset needed to display it the same way it's displayed on Facebook {/edit}

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  2. In answer to agam360’s further question in the comments,


    But how can we get that "Cover Photos" Id? (looping though all of the Graph data?!)


    Use FQL, and take name="Cover Photos" into the WHERE condition of your query too. (But keep in mind that this album name is locale dependend, so if you should be querying the data in another locale than english, you’ll have to adapt the search term.)

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