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When pulling photos from a Facebook album via the graph API, i.e.


For some albums, it only supplies partial results. For instance, an album with 15 photos may only return 13 photos. This call:


...Indeed returns the proper count of 15. My first thought was that perhaps these 2 "missing" photos have more limiting privacy settings, but every photo in the entire album (which is owned by the owner of the token, incidentally) has the same "visible to friends" privacy setting. Most albums do return all photos, as expected.

Any ideas as to what might be causing this behavior?

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Graph API is well known for returning partial results at different queries. FQL is what is efficient and is reliable. Added an answer. –  Kishor Nov 15 '12 at 9:16
Unfortunately, the FQL query returns the exact same 13 items (i.e. it's still missing 3). –  Metal450 Nov 15 '12 at 22:17

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I was missing 4 photos of 33 for one of my albums. I added 'user_status' to the permissions and it suddenly works.

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Ooh, interesting idea! Oddly, I can't repro it myself anymore, so I thought FB fixed it - but if it pops up again I'll give this a shot :) –  Metal450 Oct 29 '13 at 15:21
Just found another album where this was happening - and your suggestion worked!! Bravo, thanks so much :) –  Metal450 Jan 21 at 14:34

Instead of the cause of why it happens, I am suggesting you a workaround. Graph api is well known for returning partial results. (You can search for that, and you get hell lot of such issues.)

why not go the FQL way?

Checkout :https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/photo/

You can get the id, or direct images links of the pictures in an album in a single query.

Sample : SELECT src_big FROM photo WHERE aid="20531316728_324257"

This returns the url of biggest version of the pictures inside the album.

This should probably solve your problem as long as you are using a user access_token and not app access_token.

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It’s not as if FQL was not well-known for giving “partial results” as well … –  CBroe Nov 15 '12 at 13:06
Its much more reliable than Graph API. –  Kishor Nov 15 '12 at 13:54
YMMV, but other people have different experiences (including me). –  CBroe Nov 15 '12 at 14:36
I am suggesting a way to the user who is facing difficulties with Opengraph.If graph isnt working fine for him, FQL is his only hope. I hope I am clear. Not really looking for a cat fight or something. So Cheers! –  Kishor Nov 15 '12 at 14:40
Unfortunately, the FQL query returns the exact same 13 items (i.e. it's still missing 3). So this is not the problem. –  Metal450 Nov 15 '12 at 22:18

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