Facebook Graph API: nodes, edges, fields, and requests

The Graph API is the primary way to get data into and out of the Facebook platform.

Useful tools: open_in_new Graph API Explorer .

Docs

Facebook recommends starting with these guides:

Also useful: open_in_new Access token documentation .

Terminology

The Graph API is named after the idea of a “social graph” — a representation of the information on Facebook. It is composed of:

nodes — individual objects, such as a User, a Photo, a Page, or a Comment;
edges — connections between a collection of objects and a single object, such as Photos on a Page or Comments on a Photo;
fields — data about an object, such as a User’s birthday or a Page’s name.

Typically you use nodes to get data about a specific object, edges to get collections of objects on a single object, and fields to choose which data is included in responses.

In short:

use nodes to get data about individual objects;
use edges to get collections of objects connected to a node, or to publish objects to those collections;
use fields to specify which data you want in responses.

Host URL

Almost all requests go to graph.facebook.com. The single exception is video uploads, which use graph-video.facebook.com.

Request structure

These two forms are equivalent:

GET /comments?id=3078780142147466&summary=1&filter=stream&fields=id,from,message,created_time,parent

GET /3078780142147466/comments?summary=1&filter=stream&fields=id,from,message,created_time,parent

Object IDs

Nodes are individual objects, each with a unique ID, so to get information about a node you query its ID directly. For example, every Facebook Page or User account has an ID:

curl -i -X GET \
  "https://graph.facebook.com/object-id
    ?access_token=your-access-token"

You can usually delete a node with a DELETE on the object ID:

curl -i -X DELETE \
  "https://graph.facebook.com/object-id
    ?access_token=your-access-token"

Note: Running a DELETE against your own user ID can delete your Facebook User account.

Nodes list

open_in_new Graph API reference .

SDK

PHP library: open_in_new facebook/php-graph-sdk
Examples: open_in_new sohaibilyas/facebook-php-graph-sdk-examples