I've written a little script in JAVA, that tests the parameter limit
with four different values (10, 100, 1000 and 10000) when querying a user's news feed of Facebook using the Open Graph API and the RestFB client. As you'll see, it has a strange behavior...
Scenario:
public static void main(String[] args) {
// vars
DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
FacebookClient client = new DefaultFacebookClient(accessToken);
Connection<Post> home;
List<Post> postList;
Map<String, Post> postMap;
int i;
// limits to test
String[] limits = {"10", "100", "1000", "10000"};
for (String limit : limits) {
// init list and map (looking for duplicate posts)
postList = new LinkedList<Post>();
postMap = new LinkedHashMap<String, Post>();
// get news feed
home = client.fetchConnection(id + "/home", Post.class, Parameter.with("limit", limit));
// going through pages
i = 1;
for (List<Post> page : home) {
for (Post post : page) {
// store into list
postList.add(post);
// store into map (unique post id)
postMap.put(post.getId(), post);
}
i++;
}
// sort posts by created time
Collections.sort(postList, new Comparator<Post>() {
@Override
public int compare(Post post1, Post post2) {
return post1.getCreatedTime().compareTo(post2.getCreatedTime());
}
});
// log
try {
FileWriter out = new FileWriter("log/output.txt", true);
out.write("LIMIT: " + limit + "\n");
out.write("\tPAGES: " + (i - 1) + "\n");
out.write("\tLIST SIZE: " + postList.size() + "\n");
out.write("\tMAP SIZE: " + postMap.size() + "\n");
out.write("\tOLDER POST: " + dateFormat.format(postList.get(0).getCreatedTime()) + "\n");
out.write("\tYOUGNER POST: " + dateFormat.format(postList.get(postList.size() - 1).getCreatedTime()) + "\n");
out.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
}
Output:
LIMIT: 10
PAGES: 7
LIST SIZE: 56
MAP SIZE: 56
OLDER POST: 2009-03-22 14:58:03
YOUGNER POST: 2012-05-11 15:48:49
LIMIT: 100
PAGES: 3
LIST SIZE: 174
MAP SIZE: 172
OLDER POST: 2012-01-12 23:01:34
YOUGNER POST: 2012-05-11 15:48:49
LIMIT: 1000
PAGES: 2
LIST SIZE: 294
MAP SIZE: 292
OLDER POST: 2009-03-22 14:58:03
YOUGNER POST: 2012-05-11 15:48:49
LIMIT: 10000
PAGES: 2
LIST SIZE: 294
MAP SIZE: 292
OLDER POST: 2009-03-22 14:58:03
YOUGNER POST: 2012-05-11 15:48:49
Interpretations and questions:
Obviously, you can't get all the posts a user has had on his news feed since his account was created. Is limit limited?
With a
limit
of 100, 1000 and 10000, I must have had each time two duplicated posts within the whole returned news feed (174 - 172 = 194 - 192). Why? I never saw the same post twice on my personal news feed...With (and only with) a
limit
of 100, the older post I get was created during the year 2012, meanwhile the other values oflimit
make the query retrieving a post that was created during the year 2009. I can understand that with an upperlimit
(1000 or 10000), the query retrieves older posts. But why does alimit
of 10 make the query retrieving an older post than a query limited by 100?Last but not least point: I'm not getting the same number of posts. Obviously, the more the
limit
is high, the more the number of retrieved posts is high. What I thought first, is that the only consequence of a smallerlimit
was an upper number of pages (which is the case though), but that the number of retrieved posts would not change. But it does. Why? That said, the number of posts seems to converge between alimit
of 100 and 1000, because the number of posts is identical with alimit
of 1000 and alimit
of 10000.
PS: specifying a since
and/or a until
parameter to the query doesn't change anything.
Any answer/comment is welcome :)
Cheers.
Edit:
This is my best recall:
LIMIT: 200
PAGES: 3
LIST SIZE: 391
MAP SIZE: 389
OLDER POST: 2012-01-27 14:17:16
YOUGNER POST: 2012-05-11 16:52:38
Why 200? Is it specified anywhere in the documentation?