FaceBook Graph API: Search beyond immediate circle

4
votes

Is it possible to search for users which are beyond my immediate circle using FB graph API? If not, does having a paid subscription account help to overcome this hurdle?

I'm using following graph query but seems to be restricted within my circle:

https://graph.facebook.com/search?q=xx+yy&limit=5000&type=user&access_token=*

Also if I increase the offset using pagination in the next call, It will still returns the same set of user IDs. So not sure if I'm passing the parameters incorrectly or missing some other parameters.

Thanks for all your help in advance!

1
facebook-graph-apisearchgraph

1 Answers

0
votes

Not sure what you mean by your immediate circle in terms of Facebook but I assume you mean your friends. The Graph API allows you to search for all public objects (source) - this means every person (according to answers on this page since names are always publicly available - that's my understanding), not only people who you are friends with on Facebook.

Hence, when you're searching for "John" you should get everyone called John if you're using the Graph API correctly - make sure your access token is valid (you do not need any special permissions to search for people) and your syntax follows the example from here.

In order to test your query I suggest you use the Graph API Explorer before adding the query to your application code. It's a quick way to see if the error is in your query or elsewhere. For example, if you want to find everyone named John, use this link http://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer?method=GET&path=search%3Fq%3DJohn%26type%3Duser. Just make sure to click Get access token on the right if you're using the Explorer for the first time, otherwise the query will return an error.