Fan count for a Facebook Fan Page

Question

I needed to pull the fan count for particular fan pages on Facebook. After digging through the API, I couldn't find a way to do this with the API "proper." Instead I fell back to a FQL query, and it worked quite well.

select fan_count from page where page_id = <FAN_PAGE_ID>

What did I miss about the Facebook API. Is this the only way to capture a fan count for a page? In general, how often do you use FQL for your requests as opposed to the exposed API methods?

Answer 1

https://graph.facebook.com/cocacola

"fan_count" property. replace cocacola with your fan page's ID.

Please note that this property is being changed to "likes" in the November 2010 Roundup migration:

Graph API: The fan_count attribute on the Page object will be renamed to likes.

You can opt in to the November Roundup in your application's advanced settings page.