Facebook Graph API search using since updated_time parameter

Question

I am using the Facebook Graph API in Python. Every post has two datetimes:

1. created_date
2. updated_date

When I am providing the since parameter, it is returning feeds where the created_date is greater than or equal to the since parameter. For example, if I provide since=2015-06-05 then it will return all the posts from 5th June, 2015 to now.

But suppose there is a post that was posted on 7th June, 2015 and few activities (likes, shares, comments, etc.) that happened on 8th June, 2015. In this scenario the updated_time of that post changes but created_time will be the same (7th June, 2015). If I pass parameter since=2015-06-08 , then I won't be able to track all of the activity on that post.

Is there any solution by which I can pass the since parameter on updated_time instead of passing it to created_time ?

Answer 1

As @CBroe points out, this isn't supported by the Facebook Graph API. (It can be done using FQL , but that's deprecated and won't be supported for much longer).

That said, with some creativity (and a bit extra code) a similar effect can be achieved by combining a couple of queries.

In my application, I perform a query with the following parameters:

• until=2015-07-07 (or whatever the since date would have been)
• fields=updated_time (to keep the query fast and the payload small)
• limit=5000 (or some similarly large page size, as I'm only grabbing one field)

I then evaluate each post that has an updated_time greater than the would-be since date, and throw those posts into a queue to download the entirety of the post content.

Note: If you're dealing with content where there are frequent updates on past content, you'd likely want to use the Graph API's Batch Requests feature , as opposed to downloading each post individually.

So, for example, if the until (and, thus, since ) date is 2015-07-07 and the updated_time on a post is 2015-10-15 , then I know that post was created prior to 2015-07-07 but updated afterwards. It won't get picked up in a since query, but I can easily download it individually to synchronize my cache.

Answer 2

If the aim of your application is to react to changes on a given page or feed, consider using Webhooks instead of manually crawling the page for updates.

Webhooks allows you to receive real-time HTTP notifications of changes to specific objects in the Facebook Social Graph.