[FIXED] How should I properly handle non-cursor pagination with the Facebook PHP SDK?

Issue

I am using a few of the Facebook Graph API methods that have pagination successfully using cursor-based pagination, similar to this:

echo '<ul>';
$params = array('limit' => 10);

do {
    $groups = (new FacebookRequest(
        $session, 'GET', '/me/groups', $params
    ))->execute()->getGraphObject();
    if (null !== $groups->getProperty('paging') && null != $groups->getProperty('paging')->getProperty('next')) {
        $params = array('limit' => 10, 'after' => $groups->getProperty('paging')->getProperty('cursors')->getProperty('after'));
    } else {
        $params = null;
    }
    foreach ($groups->getProperty('data')->asArray() as $group) {
        echo '<li><a href="#" data-group-id="' . $group->id . '" class="group-id">' . $group->name . '</a></li>';
    }
} while ($params !== null);
echo '</ul>';

This simple code will grab all the groups of the current user. It checks that the paging and paging/next properties are present and if so uses the cursor to setup another iteration of the loop. I realise now this could probably have been done better as the cursor isn't always available. When I use the /{group-id}/feed API endpoint there are the previous and next links but no cursor.

So, how am I supposed to make paginated requests when there is no cursor with the Facebook PHP SDK?

I see other answers suggesting using cURL or even file_get_contents to grab the next and previous URLs but that seems very silly considering I'm using the PHP SDK here - surely there's a built-in way?

I'm using facebook/php-sdk-v4 with Composer - there doesn't seem to be the (old?) $facebook->api(...) functionality availble here either.

Solution

Have a look at

• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/php/FacebookResponse/4.0.0

There is a method getRequestForNextPage() in the PHP SDK v4.0.0.

// A FacebookResponse is returned from an executed FacebookRequest
try {
  $response = (new FacebookRequest($session, 'GET', '/me'))->execute();
  // You can get the request back:
  $request = $response->getRequest();
  // You can get the response as a GraphObject:
  $object = $response->getGraphObject();
  // You can get the response as a subclass of GraphObject:
  $me = $response->getGraphObject(GraphUser::className());
  // If this response has multiple pages, you can get a request for the next or previous pages:
  $nextPageRequest = $response->getRequestForNextPage();
  $previousPageRequest = $response->getRequestForPreviousPage();
} catch (FacebookRequestException $ex) {
  echo $ex->getMessage();
} catch (\Exception $ex) {
  echo $ex->getMessage();
}

By looking at the source code at

• https://github.com/facebook/facebook-php-sdk-v4/blob/4.0-dev/src/Facebook/FacebookResponse.php#L164

it just handles the next property:

return $this->handlePagination('next');

IMHO, using the next property as a default should be fine, opposed to cursors. Furthermore, I don't even see a cursors property when querying a sample group's feed, so this might be obsolete.

References:

• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/using-graph-api/v2.3#paging

Answered By - Tobi