CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonfacebookfacebook-graph-api
asyd
asyd

Reputation: 23

Is there a way to obtain Facebook Insights for specific posts trough the Graph API?

Sorry to bother with maybe a stupid question, but I'm still a beginner with the Graph API. A little background to better understand my question: I need to run an analysis on a Facebook page (of which I'm not the owner but administrator, small size, ~4000 likes and ~150 posts, more or less one per day). What I intended to do was the following:

  1. Obtain the data trough Graph API. Namely, I was most interested in retrieving the messages, number of likes and reach of every post

  2. Import the data in R and identify the outliers (I mean, the posts whose likes and reach are not in line with the mean)

  3. Look for correlations between those messages (since the page, for its nature, needs to talk about a wide range of topics, I want to understand which of them generate the most reactions and plan accordingly)

I've already done an analysis "by hand", but I want to test if it is possible to make the same conclusions without involving a human operator.

I've looked on the web for tutorials on how to use the graph API in python, but I've not been able to find something comprehensive. I've set up my API and obtained the permanent page token with manage_pages and read_insights permissions. Here an idea of what I'm doing:`

def get_facebook_page_data(page_id, access_token):

website = "https://graph.facebook.com/v3.1/"

location = "%s/posts/" % page_id     

fields = "?fields=message,id" + \
"reactions.type(LIKE).limit(0).summary(total_count).as(reactions_like)"

authentication = "&limit=100&access_token=%s" % (access_token)

request_url = website + location + fields + authentication

data = json.loads(request_data_from_url(request_url))
return data`

So, with this function I'm able to obtain the id, message and number of likes of all the posts stored inside data, and with another function I write everything on a csv file. First question: am I doing something wrong? Second question: I cannot retrieve a lot of information. For example, when adding type to the fields, it says that this is deprecated (I'm running python 3.7.3)

Third questions: how do I retrieve the reach for every post? I'm assuming this is obtained by scraping the insights, by I don't seem to get it right... How do I query the Graph API for those data?

In general, I'm finding a lot of trouble in just getting the right keywords while building the links. I've installed facebook-sdk but I don't know how to use it (as I said, I'm a beginner). Do you have suggestions on this?

Thanks very much to everyone answering, and greetigs from Italy!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 587

Answers (1)

Matteo
Matteo

Reputation: 39390

First of all I suggest to use the latest version of the API available, currently the 5.0, regarding your question:

Second question: I cannot retrieve a lot of information. For example, when adding type to the fields, it says that this is deprecated (I'm running python 3.7.3)

Regarding to the doc of the Page Feed see the attachments field, as example, adding this to the request:

attachments.fields(media_type)

Third questions: how do I retrieve the reach for every post? I'm assuming this is obtained by scraping the insights, by I don't seem to get it right... How do I query the Graph API for those data?

Regarding to the doc of the Page Insights see the page_impressions field, as example in order to return the page_impressions field for a lifetime period:

insights.period(lifetime).metric(post_impressions_unique)

A complete example:

https://graph.facebook.com/v3.1/<PAGE-ID>/posts?fields=message,id,reactions.type(LIKE).limit(0).summary(total_count).as(reactions_like),insights.period(lifetime).metric(post_impressions_unique),attachments.fields(media_type)

Will return:

{
    "data": [{
                "message": "Hello",
                "id": "269816000129666_780829305694997",
                "reactions_like": {
                    "data": [],
                    "summary": {
                        "total_count": 0
                    }
                },
                "insights": {
                    "data": [{
                        "name": "post_impressions_unique",
                        "period": "lifetime",
                        "values": [{
                            "value": 15
                        }],
                        "title": "Lifetime Post Total Reach",
                        "description": "Lifetime: The number of people who had your Page's post enter their screen. Posts include statuses, photos, links, videos and more. (Unique Users)",
                        "id": "269816000129666_780829305694997/insights/post_impressions_unique/lifetime"
                    }],
                    "paging": {
                        "previous": "https://graph.facebook.com/v3.1/269816000129666_780829305694997/insights?access_token=EAAAAKq6xRNcBAOMKY3StjWXPgL1REATIfPFsyZCY21KDAnZAZB7MpKgNGCHRlKVt9bZBoVZAHpV0jqxZAAVZCOKDIh96YxvpxPaavR1AYK5EQCEEOSMKqz4ZAItcX9WvVfEEN5FzqgyoQWi8oKZBQmQB4Nf80SgicaesluNbI0hDMw2QAxfV9rAFpRc10Pop1d1vtVeziPEjEKwZDZD&metric=post_impressions_unique&period=lifetime&since=1573891200&until=1574064000",
                        "next": "https://graph.facebook.com/v3.1/269816000129666_780829305694997/insights?access_token=EAAAAKq6xRNcBAOMKY3StjWXPgL1REATIfPFsyZCY21KDAnZAZB7MpKgNGCHRlKVt9bZBoVZAHpV0jqxZAAVZCOKDIh96YxvpxPaavR1AYK5EQCEEOSMKqz4ZAItcX9WvVfEEN5FzqgyoQWi8oKZBQmQB4Nf80SgicaesluNbI0hDMw2QAxfV9rAFpRc10Pop1d1vtVeziPEjEKwZDZD&metric=post_impressions_unique&period=lifetime&since=1574236800&until=1574409600"
                    }
                },
                "attachments": {
                    "data": [{
                        "media_type": "photo"
                    }]
                }
            },
            {
                "message": "Say hello!",
                "id": "269816000129666_780826782361916",
                "reactions_like": {
                    "data": [],
                    "summary": {
                        "total_count": 0
                    }
                },
                "insights": {
                    "data": [{
                        "name": "post_impressions_unique",
                        "period": "lifetime",
                        "values": [{
                            "value": 14
                        }],
                        "title": "Lifetime Post Total Reach",
                        "description": "Lifetime: The number of people who had your Page's post enter their screen. Posts include statuses, photos, links, videos and more. (Unique Users)",
                        "id": "269816000129666_780826782361916/insights/post_impressions_unique/lifetime"
                    }],
                    "paging": {
                        "previous": "https://graph.facebook.com/v3.1/269816000129666_780826782361916/insights?access_token=EAAAAKq6xRNcBAOMKY3StjWXPgL1REATIfPFsyZCY21KDAnZAZB7MpKgNGCHRlKVt9bZBoVZAHpV0jqxZAAVZCOKDIh96YxvpxPaavR1AYK5EQCEEOSMKqz4ZAItcX9WvVfEEN5FzqgyoQWi8oKZBQmQB4Nf80SgicaesluNbI0hDMw2QAxfV9rAFpRc10Pop1d1vtVeziPEjEKwZDZD&metric=post_impressions_unique&period=lifetime&since=1573891200&until=1574064000",
                        "next": "https://graph.facebook.com/v3.1/269816000129666_780826782361916/insights?access_token=EAAAAKq6xRNcBAOMKY3StjWXPgL1REATIfPFsyZCY21KDAnZAZB7MpKgNGCHRlKVt9bZBoVZAHpV0jqxZAAVZCOKDIh96YxvpxPaavR1AYK5EQCEEOSMKqz4ZAItcX9WvVfEEN5FzqgyoQWi8oKZBQmQB4Nf80SgicaesluNbI0hDMw2QAxfV9rAFpRc10Pop1d1vtVeziPEjEKwZDZD&metric=post_impressions_unique&period=lifetime&since=1574236800&until=1574409600"
                    }
                },
                "attachments": {
                    "data": [{
                        "media_type": "photo"
                    }]
                }
            },

Upvotes: 1

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