Request to get total count of Facebook page likes in v2.3 API

Question

Previously I was using FQL for this, but this is deprecated as of v2.1 and I'm moving over to v2.3 using the graph edge "likes".

Here is my URL:

https://graph.facebook.com/v2.3/<page_id>/likes?access_token=<access_token>&summary=true

This returns detail JSON with paging info - but it omits the total_count which is supposed to be returned when "summary=true" is used as described in the Facebook docs - you'll see what I mean.

Answer 1

Thanks @NativePaul

I spent almost two days to find a solution to get the Facebook Fan Page likes counter in numeric value to a shortcode. So I have amended a code I got from this link: http://www.internoetics.com/2015/07/13/display-number-facebook-page-likes-wordpress-php/

And amended it to work with the fan_count fields and here is the code for your reference:

/*
	Display the Number of Facebook Page Likes in Plain Text with WordPress Shortcode (and PHP)
	Shortcode: [fbpagelikes id="" appid="" appsecret="" cache="" n="1"]
*/


function internoetics_fb_pagelikes($atts) {
  extract(shortcode_atts(array(
    'id' => 'kenryscom',
    'appid' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
    'appsecret' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
    'n' => 1,
    'cache' => 3600 * 24 * 1
  ), $atts));

 $fbcounthash = md5("$url.$cache.$appid.$appsecret.$n");
 $fbcountrecord = 'fblikes_' . $fbcounthash;
 $cachedposts = get_transient($fbcountrecord);
 if ($cachedposts !== false) {
 return $cachedposts;

  } else {

  $json_url ='https://graph.facebook.com/' . $id . '?fields=fan_count&access_token=' . $appid . '|' . $appsecret;
  $json = file_get_contents($json_url);
  $json_output = json_decode($json);
 
  if($json_output->fan_count) {
   $fan_count = $json_output->fan_count;
   if ($n) $fan_count = number_format($fan_count);
   set_transient($fbcountrecord, $fan_count, $cache);
   return $fan_count;
    } else {
   return 'Unavailable';
  }
 }
}
add_shortcode('fbpagelikes','internoetics_fb_pagelikes');

You have to add the above code to the theme functions file and use the Shortcode anywhere as mentioned in the beginning of the code.

Answer 2

Anyone stumbling onto this answer now (April 2016) will get frustrated because the accepted answer no longer works in v2.6

?fields=likes and /likes now return the same result -> the pages that the page likes.

To get the number of fans, you now need to use fields=fan_count

https://graph.facebook.com/pepsius/?fields=fan_count&access_token=<access_token>

As you can see above, you can also make the request directly with the pagename, no need to fetch the pageID.

Answer 3

What you are looking for the total number of people that have liked the page or what the page has liked?

For example.

https://graph.facebook.com/v2.3/56381779049/likes?access_token=<access_token>&summary=true

Will return what the Page PepsiUS has liked.

https://graph.facebook.com/v2.3/56381779049?fields=likes&access_token=<access_token>

Will return the total number of people that have liked the page.

{"likes": 32804486, 
"id": "56381779049"}

Varified here PepsiUS