Small fixes to CodeIgniter, Facebook FQL via Graph with cURL (Phil Sturgeon’s library)

I went absolutely bonkers on trying to get CodeIgniter with Facebook Graph API via cURL.

Firstly, the problem here was the fact that everything was indeed working fine. Then when I tested my code again, things started breaking. Here’s my scenario.

I am using CodeIgniter 2.1.0 (the latest one) and I am trying to get the list of all the albums I have on Facebook via Facebook Graph API. In particular, I am running FQL to get these data, since I only need a few data fields.

In addition, I am also using Phil Sturgeon’s cURL library, so I don’t have to worry about all the nitty gritty details.

Here are TWO fixes I had to implement in my code to get things rolling.

1. Specify “http_build_query” in Curl.php to handle ampersand character correctly.  According to the PHP site, this is what it states.

   As noted before, with php5.3 the separator is & on some servers it seems. Normally if posting to another php5.3 machine this will not be a problem. But if you post to a tomcat java server or something else the & might not be handled properly. To overcome this specify: http_build_query($array, ”, ‘&’).

   Looks like when interacting with Facebook Graph, you need to specify this.

2. Specify options in cURL – Previously, I called a “simple_get( URL, array(‘q’ => my_fql, ‘access_token’ => my_access_token))”. When talking to FB, you need to specify the following options

   $this->curl->option(CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);

   A little bit strange, since I didn’t have to do this before. But if Facebook is tweaking their systems all the time, which I imagine they do, we just need to adapt.

Hope that alleviates pain for some people who are doing similar things as me.