Facebook JS SDK how to get current user's first name?

Question

Do I have to make a graph API call via FB.api to get the current logged in user's first name? Or, is there an easier/faster way?

Answer 1

Click to copy

FB.api('/me', function(response) {
    $('#name').html("Welcome " + response.name);
});

That's all you need.

Answer 2

Attributes firstname and lastname are not returned by FB JS SDK API login request anymore. This changed sometime between ver. 2.2 (06/2014) and 2.5 (01/2015).

The reason behind is, that login request only returns publicly available attributes, which is fbid and name. Firstname and lastname are not publicly accessible attributes and require permissions granted by a user. See here.

We use a "guess workaround" - if the attribute name has more than 1 word, we split them into firstname and lastname attributes, or populate firstname from name. It's better/easier in some situations than bothering users with permissions, response checkups, callbacks etc..