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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Facebook API : Exporting your friends birthdays into vCards format

The following sample Facebook desktop application exports your friends birthdays in a vCard file format. This file is suitable to be imported into your GMail contacts for example.


Here is the script. It’s pretty simple :

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use WWW::Facebook::API;
use Text::vCard::Addressbook;
use Date::Parse;

my $client = WWW::Facebook::API->new(
desktop => 1,
api_key => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
secret  => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
);

my $token = $client->auth->create_token;

my $url = $client->get_login_url( auth_token => $token, req_perms => 'friends_birthday' );
system "firefox", $url;
sleep 15;

$client->auth->get_session($token);
my $response = $client->fql->query(query => 'select first_name, last_name, birthday from user where uid in (select uid2 from friend where uid1=me())');

my $ab = text::vcard::addressbook->new;
# processes each contact and creates a vCard for it {{{
foreach my $contact (@$response) {
my $vc = $ab->add_vcard;

my $fn = $contact->{first_name} || "";
my $ln = $contact->{last_name} || "";
$ln = uc $ln;
my $bd = $contact->{birthday} || "";
$bd =~ s/,//g;

$vc->fullname($fn . " " . $ln);
if ($bd) {
my ($ss,$mm,$hh,$day,$month,$year,$zone) = strptime($bd);
$vc->bday(join("-", (1900 + ($year || " "), $month + 1, $day)));
}
}
# }}}
print $ab->export();
$client->auth->logout;


This is intended as a sample code for using the WWW::Facebook::API perl module (there are way too few working examples out there). Let me know if you need complementary explanations about anything.


The only thing I really need to figure out now is how to proceed if I ever wanted to distribute this code without giving away the application secret. There is a rather good general explanation of the authentication process of a facebook desktop application, but I couldn’t find a working sample code to get started with. If you do know how to do that, please share in the comments.
(source: http://www.sakana.fr/blog/2010/11/02/facebook-api-exporting-your-friends-birthdays-into-vcards-format/)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow this is from fb?? damn you must be good

The Viber said...

NOW this is handy, well done.

Thrasher said...

Sweet! Can't wait to try it out.

Lemmiwinks said...

I like what you did with your blog.

Followin !

Come At Me Bro said...

Love facebook!

TheGamer said...

This is awesome!

Come At Me Bro said...

This is sweet!

Lemmiwinks said...

Kewl story, bra! waiting for updates from you

Come At Me Bro said...

Sweet!

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