Facebook user_id : big_int, int or string?

Question

Facebook\'s user id\'s go up to 2^32 .. which by my count it 4294967296.

mySQL\'s unsigned int\'s range is 0 to 4294967295 (which is 1 short - or my math is wrong) a

Answer 1

If you are reading this in 2015 when facebook has upgraded their API to 2.0 version. They have added a note in their documentation stating that their ids would be changed and would have an app scope. So maybe there is huge possibility later in the future that they might change all the ids to Alpha numeric.

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/upgrading#upgrading_v2_0_user_ids So I would suggest to keep the type to varchar and avoid any future migration pains