Facebook API - return friends list (PHP arrays)

Question

Im trying to return the friend list of a user using a Facebook app without using the PHP SDK. I have managed to return the users name, gender, etc. without using an auth code. Im now trying to return a list of names who are the users friends, all ive managed to do so far is print the array, I cant seem to only print the name as its laid out differently to the users name, gender, etc. which I managed to echo by doing:

$user->name

But when I try that for the friends list it doesnt work and doesnt echo anything at all, I was just wondering if anyone knew how I go about doing this?

Using print_r I get the following:

Array(
[0] => Array ( [name] => Friend's name [id] => x )
[1] => Array ( [name] => Friend's name [id] => x )
[2] =>....)

Until all of the friends have been listed.

 { "name": "Name", 
    "hometown": {
      "id": "Hometown_id", 
      "name": "Hometown"
    }, 
    "id": "Friend_id" }

Above is the structure of the array of each, I think a potential issue is that not everybody has a hometown set which may be why I'm receiving a forEach error?

Yes im using oauth_token and I can print the whole array but I only want the names — thrash
Why don't you just access the array in the normal way you do in php? — Daedalus
What are you doing to try to access the names? Just checking, but you are using $arr[0]['name'] instead of just $arr['name'] or $arr[0], right? — asifrc

Daedalus Daedalus · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-10T05:26:04

Given that array structure, it's pretty simple(in php) to get what you want. I recommend reading from php's manual on arrays.

Just try something like this:

foreach ($array as $inner_array) {
    echo $inner_array['name'] . "<br />";
}

Aside from that, it would be...

echo $your_array[0]['name'];
echo $your_array[1]['name'];

And so on and so fourth..

Update:

What you are now looking is not an array, but a javascript object. It is referred to as JSON: Javascript Object Notation.

You need a special parser to interpret it as an array: json_decode(), which comes shipped with php greater than or equal to 5.2.0. To make the array associative, you must pass a second parameter, a boolean, true. It defaults to false otherwise. An example of usage:

$json = '{ "name": "Name", 
    "hometown": {
      "id": "Hometown_id", 
      "name": "Hometown"
    }, 
    "id": "Friend_id" }';

$json_arr = json_decode($json,true);

foreach ($json_arr as $key => $var) {
    if (!is_array($var)) {
        if ($key == 'name') {
            echo $var . "<br />";
        }
    }
}

Update 2:

foreach ($json_arr as $key => $var) {
    if (!is_array($var)) {
        if ($key == 'name') {
            echo "Name: " . $var . "<br />";
        }
    }
    else {
        if ($key == 'hometown') {
            echo "Hometown: " . $var['name'] . "<br />";
        }
    }
}

The above should do what you need.

Facebook API - return friends list (PHP arrays)

2 Answers