Explore the Facebook Graph API

First, Facebook considers the relationships among the entities as a "Social Graph".

The Facebook Graph API is the primary way to get data in and out of Facebook's social graph. It's a low-level HTTP-based API that you can use to query data, post new stories, upload photos and a variety of other tasks that an app might need to do.

The Graph API is named after the idea of a 'social graph' - a representation of the information on Facebook composed of:

• nodes: basically "things" such as a User, a Photo, a Page, a Comment
• edges: the connections between those "things", such as a Page's Photos, or a Photo's Comments
• fields: info about those "things", such as the birthday of a User, or the name of a Page.

The Graph API is HTTP based, so works with any language that has an HTTP library, such as cURL, urllib. I'll explain a bit more about what you can do with this in the section below, but it means you can also use the Graph API directly in your browser, for example:

• http://graph.facebook.com/facebook/picture?redirect=false

Results obtained containing information about icons of facebook graph. Copy value URL included in the result and paste on your browser, you will get this icon.

{
   "data": {
      "url": "https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-xpf1/t1.0-1/p50x50/1377580_10152203108461729_809245696_n.png",
      "is_silhouette": false
   }
}

Object ID

Each node has a unique ID which is used to access it via the Graph API

Here is how to use the ID for the Node:

Node:

GET
graph.facebook.com /{node-id}

POST
graph.facebook.com /{node-id}

Edge:

GET
graph.facebook.com /{node-id}/{edge-name}


POST
graph.facebook.com /{node-id}/{edge-name}

Access Token

Access the page:

• https://developers.facebook.com/

Then go to the "Graph API Explorer", it allows you to explore what the Graph API gives you an intuitive way.

The "Graph API Explorer" screen has 4 important parts:

• Access Token: This is the code that allows to send request to server. If you are logging into a Facebook account, this value will be display for that account by default.
• URL sent to the server to get pricing information.
• Region 3 helps you add the necessary fields to request.
• After clicking Submit, you will get the result

Access Token is a String, which is like a license that allows you to access the Facebook Graph to retrieve certain data. Each Access Token carries information that you have the permissions to do. To maximize your Facebook Graph API discovery experience on your Facebook account, create an Access Token with the largest permissions.

Now, you have got the new Access Token, with more powers to explore data on your Facebook account with Facebook Graph API.

Note that: Access Token that you have received allows you to access and retreive data relating to your Facebook account, such as friendlist, album, comments, like list... It does not have the permissions to collect the datas of another facebook account, other than the public data.