Facebook FQL stream limit?

I want to get the full history of my wall. But I seem to hit a limit somewhere back in June.

I do multiple calls like this:

SELECT created_time,message FROM stream WHERE source_id=MY_USER_ID LIMIT 50

SELECT created_time,message FROM stream WHERE source_id=MY_USER_ID LIMIT 51,100

and so on...

But I always end up on the same last (first) post on my wall. Through facebook.com I can go back much longer so Facebook obviously have the data.

Why am I not getting older posts? Is there another way to scrape my history?

From http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/stream :

The stream table is limited to the last 30 days or 50 posts, whichever is greater

I am experiencing the same thing. I don't understand it at all, but it appears that the offset cannot be greater than the limit * 1.5

Theoretically, this means that always increasing the limit to match the offset would fix it, but I haven't been able to verify this (I'm not sure whether the problems I'm seeing are other bugs in my code or if there are other limitations I don't understand about getting the stream).

Can anyone explain what I'm seeing and whatever I'm missing?

You can reproduce my results by going to the FQL Test Console:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/rest/fql.query

pasting in this query:

SELECT post_id, created_time, message, likes, comments, attachment, permalink, source_id, actor_id 
FROM stream 
WHERE filter_key IN 
(
      SELECT filter_key 
      FROM stream_filter 
      WHERE uid=me() AND type='newsfeed'
) 
AND is_hidden = 0 limit 100 offset 150

When you click "Test Method" you will see one of the 2 results I am getting:

The results come back: [{post_id:"926... (which I expected)
It returns empty [] (which I didn't expect)

You will likely need to experiment by changing the "offset" value until you find the exact place where it breaks. Just now I found it breaks for me at 155 and 156.

Try changing both the limit and the offset and you'll see that the empty results don't occur at a particular location in the stream. Here are some examples of results I've seen:

"...limit 50 offset 100" breaks, returning empty []
"...limit 100 offset 50" works, returning expected results
"...limit 50 offset 74" works
"...limit 50 offset 75" breaks
"...limit 20 offset 29" works
"...limit 20 offset 30" breaks

Besides seeing the limit=offset*1.5 relationship, I really don't understand what is going on here.

edited Sep 27 '13 at 7:33

Mortalus

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answered Nov 5 '10 at 0:35

Subcreation

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Skip the FQL and go straight to graph. I tried FQL and it was buggy when it came to limits and getting specified date ranges. Here's the graph address. Put in your own page facebook_id and access_token:

https://graph.facebook.com/FACEBOOK_ID/posts?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

Then if you want to get your history set your date range using since, until and limit:

https://graph.facebook.com/FACEBOOK_ID/posts?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN&since=START_DATE&until=END_DATE&limit=1000

Those start and end dates are in unix time, and I used limit because if I didn't it would only give me 25 at a time. Finally if you want insights for your posts, you'll have to go to each individual post and grab the insights for that post:

https://graph.facebook.com/POST_ID/insights?access_token=ACCESS_TOKEN

edited Jun 6 '12 at 17:53

answered Jun 6 '12 at 17:19

crunkchitis

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Tested this and confirmed that adding a limit allowed the system to return more than 25 results. Thanks for the fix! – James Gentes Feb 14 '13 at 5:01
Kind of outdated but facebook_id/posts does not supply the same results as the stream. photos, ablums and videos are excluded from this API method. – Ian Segers Dec 5 '13 at 13:02

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I dont know why, but when I use the filter_key = 'others' the LIMIT xx works.

Here is my fql query

SELECT message, attachment, message_tags FROM stream WHERE type = 'xx' AND source_id = xxxx AND is_hidden = 0 AND filter_key = 'others' LIMIT 5

and now I get exactly 5 posts...when i use LIMIT 7 i get 7 and so on.

edited Jul 12 '13 at 19:08

sakibmoon

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answered Oct 4 '12 at 7:18

Roman

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As @Subcreation said, something is wack with FQL on stream with LIMIT and OFFSET and higher LIMIT/OFFSET ratios seem to work better.

I have created an issue on it Facebook at http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/303076713093995. I suggest you subscribe to it and indicate you can reproduce it to get it bumped up in priority.

In the bug I describe how a simple stream FQL returns very inconsistent response counts based on its LIMIT/OFFSET. For example:

433 - LIMIT 500 OFFSET 0
333 - LIMIT 500 OFFSET 100
100 - LIMIT 100 OFFSET 0
0 - LIMIT 100 OFFSET 100
113 - LIMIT 200 OFFSET 100
193 - LIMIT 200 OFFSET 20

answered Apr 5 '12 at 21:11

studgeek

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You get a maximum likes of 1000 when using LIMIT FQL: SELECT user_id FROM like WHERE object_id=10151751324059927 LIMIT 20000000

answered Aug 23 '13 at 8:58

Saki

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You could specify created_time for your facebook query. create_time field is unix based time. You could convert it with such convertor http://www.onlineconversion.com/unix_time.htm, or use program methods depends on you language.

Template based on your request

SELECT created_time,message FROM stream WHERE source_id=MY_USER_ID and created_time>BEGIN_OF_RANGE and created_time>END_OF_RANGE LIMIT 50

And specific example from 20.09.2012 to 20.09.2013

 SELECT created_time,message FROM stream WHERE source_id=MY_USER_ID and created_time>1348099200 and created_time>1379635200 LIMIT 50

answered Sep 22 '13 at 5:34

Владимир Дворник

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I have a similar issue trying to download older posts from a public page, adding a filter ' AND created_time < t', and setting t for each query to the minumum created_time I got so far. The weird thing is that for some values of t this returns an empty set, but if I manually set t back of one or two hours, then I start getting results again. I tried to debug this using the explorer and got to a point where a certain t would get me 0 results, and t-1 would get results, and repeating would give me the same behavior.

I think this may be a bug, because obviously if I created_time < t-1 gives me results, then also created_time < t should. If it was a question of rate limits or access rights, then I should get an error, instead I get an empty set and only for some values of t.

My suggestion for you is to filter on created_time, and change it manually when you stop getting results.

answered Dec 21 '13 at 12:51

ggll

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-4

Try it with a comma:

SELECT post_id, created_time, message, likes, comments, attachment, permalink, source_id, actor_id FROM stream WHERE filter_key IN (SELECT filter_key FROM stream_filter WHERE uid=me() AND type='newsfeed') AND is_hidden = 0 limit 11,5

edited Jul 1 '11 at 21:55

Jon

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answered Jul 1 '11 at 16:14

Muck

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1

-1 a comma is used in the question example... – Nils Munch Jul 25 '11 at 6:58

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Facebook FQL stream limit?

I am experiencing the same thing. I don't understand it at all, but it appears that the offset cannot be greater than the limit * 1.5

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