How to handle the big int facebook uid returned by FQL?

Question

I\'ve a problem in handling the big userid\'s of facebook and properly storing them into my database..

As the fql.query REST api is going to be deprecated ,I\'m usin

Answer 1

There are two things very consistent about Facebook. They are: 1) changing their APIs at their whim without any headsup. 2) Inconsistency between graph and fql objects.

As you have indicated, the unquoted values returned from Facebook are always long's (aka big int, aka Int64). And the quoted values are string representations of the long value.

What it appears to me is that the $facebook->api call is munging the longs into floats. I'd suggest logging it as a bug with the $facebook->api team.

In the interim while they fix that bug, you can code your own code to do the HTTP post to the graph and parse the returned results. I don't encounter this issue with the C# API, nor with the Javascript API.

Answer 2

If youre using php (http://php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php):

printf("%14.0f", 1.00000145202E+14);

outputs:

100000145202000

Javascript:

parseFloat('1.00000145202E+14')

Answer 3

I tried most methods and after Google some more forums and facebook code list if found the following worked like a charm for me.

After i get the results from a FQL query i used the following line of code,

$friends = json_decode(preg_replace('/"uid":(\d+)/', '"uid":"$1"', $result),true); 
// consider $result as the result rendered by the FQL query.

When i use the file_get_contents for a FB call you could have seen the error with error codes, so the best way to go with that is using CURL for all the FB API calls whenever necessary.

Please find the complete code i've used to get proper results,

$access_token = $facebook->getAccessToken();
$request_url ="https://graph.facebook.com/fql
               ?q=SELECT+uid,+name,+sex+FROM+user+where+uid+in+
               (SELECT+uid2+FROM+friend+WHERE+uid1+=$fbuid)".
               "&access_token=".$access_token;

$opts = array(
            CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT => 10,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
            CURLOPT_TIMEOUT        => 60,
            CURLOPT_USERAGENT      => 'facebook-php-3.1',
            CURLOPT_CAINFO         => /lib/fb_ca_chain_bundle.crt',
           //replace the above path with proper path of the crt file 
           //in order to avoid the exceptions rendered by FB 
           //when we try to use CURL without proper certification file.
    );

$opts[CURLOPT_URL] = $request_url;

if (isset($opts[CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER])) {
        $existing_headers = $opts[CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER];
        $existing_headers[] = 'Expect:';
        $opts[CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER] = $existing_headers;
} else {
        $opts[CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER] = array('Expect:');
}

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($ch, $opts);
$result = curl_exec($ch);

if ($result === false) {
      $e = new FacebookApiException(array(
        'error_code' => curl_errno($ch),
        'error' => array(
        'message' => curl_error($ch),
        'type' => 'CurlException',
        ),
      ));
      curl_close($ch);
      throw $e;
}

curl_close($ch);
$friends = json_decode(preg_replace('/"uid":(\d+)/','"uid":"$1"',$result));

I just to post this answers so it may help others until Facebook resolve this inconsistency.