CODEWITHSUNDEEP
facebookapiemail
user1624577
user1624577

Reputation: 577

Facebook API, Graph, FQL,... and email search

I am working on a project related to both school and work where I would like to combine data from a college entrance application (which includes email address) and Facebook data, even a minimum amount of data, such as number of "friends" or any other public info they've put out there. Am I correct that you can't really programmatically search Facebook by email address? Feel free to make any suggestions. Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1395

Answers (1)

cpilko
cpilko

Reputation: 11852

You can search Facebook by email address, you just can't reliably search Facebook by email address.

For instance, you can make this query with a user access token:

https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=user&[email protected]&access_token=TOKEN

I've tried this with a few people I know who are on Facebook, where I know their email address, but I am not friends with them. (Mostly my wife's friends).

In my testing, only about 20% of these queries return a Facebook user_id. I'm not sure if they don't have the email I know linked to their user account or if they have their privacy set to restrict their email address.

Once you have their user_id, you can access all their public information at

https://graph.facebook.com/USER_ID

You don't need an access token to get this information.

Upvotes: 2

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