Facebook Graph API Comment Count Suddenly Stopped Working - php

Question

Our site uses our own comment system (simple php/mysql) and also the fb comment plugin. I would like to be able to add the comment counts of each to display a single total count of comments from both together. Seems simple enough.
Months ago, I got this working. Then it suddenly stopped working. This morning, I found a new way to do it. Got it working on one page, and by the time I had added the code to all the pages on which we have comments, it was no longer working.
I am pulling my hair out trying to get this working, having virtually zero understanding of json. The FB API explorer gives me an error about auth tokens, but doing what I see recommended has no effect (i.e. creating a new fb app and including the block of auth code they provide).
This is what was working fine at first this am:
$fbcounturl = 'http://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/article.php?articleID=1902';
$fbjsonurl = "https://graph.facebook.com/v2.1/?fields=share{comment_count}&id=" .$fbcounturl;
$fbdata = file_get_contents($fbjsonurl);
$fbarray = json_decode($fbdata, true);
$fbcomcount = $fbarray['share']['comment_count'];
print($fbcomcount);
Then I could simply add $fbcomcount to the $comCount from our db.
If I just browse to the url, I get the json info fine:
{
"share": {
"comment_count": 3
},
"id": "http://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/article.php?articleID=1902"
}
But the $fbcomcount is empty.
Here is an example of a page that would use this -
http://www.catalystathletics.com/article/1902/Jumping-Forward-in-the-Snatch-or-Clean-Error-Correction/#comments
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Answer 1

Ran into the same issue recently, Facebook comment count simply stopped working. Eventually tracked down the error in the returned JSOn response, telling me Error #4 Application request limit reached
{"error":{"message":"(#4) Application request limit
reached","type":"OAuthException","is_transient":true,"code":4,"fbtrace_id":"EUNAVRNgnFu"}}`
Here is a good, detailed response on Facebook Open Graph API limits I found elsewhere:
The Facebook API limit isn't really documented, but apparently it's something like: 600 calls per 600 seconds, per token & per IP. As the site is restricted, quoting the relevant part:
After some testing and discussion with the Facebook platform team, there is no official limit I'm aware of or can find in the documentation. However, I've found 600 calls per 600 seconds, per token & per IP to be about where they stop you. I've also seen some application based rate limiting but don't have any numbers.
As a general rule, one call per second should not get rate limited. On the surface this seems very restrictive but remember you can batch certain calls and use the subscription API to get changes.
As you can access the Graph API on the client side via the Javascript SDK; I think if you travel your request for photos from the client, you won't hit any application limit as it's the user (each one with unique id) who's fetching data, not your application server (unique ID).
This may mean a huge refactor if everything you do go through a server. But it seems like the best solution if you have so many request (as it'll give a breath to your server).
Else, you can try batch request, but I guess you're already going this way if you have big traffic.
If nothing of this works, according to the Facebook Platform Policy you should contact them.
If you exceed, or plan to exceed, any of the following thresholds please contact us as you may be subject to additional terms: (>5M MAU) or (>100M API calls per day) or (>50M impressions per day).