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/)
