Facebook PHP throwing exception "(#803) Some of the aliases you requested do not exist"

Question

I have a valid and authenticated user, but when posting to their wall from our PHP web app it returns:

Fatal error: Uncaught OAuthException: (#803) Some of the aliases you requested do not exist: xxxxxxxxxxxxx","name":"xxxxxxx

I have 24 other users that can post with no issues. And I can see the user exists by going to https://graph.facebook.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Here is the code:

    $fb_user_id = $row[0]; // loaded from DB
    $facebook_token = $row[1]; // loaded from DB

    $result = $facebook->api('/' . $fb_user_id. '/feed/',
                                'post',
                                array('access_token' => $facebook_token,
                                    'message' => $postMessage,
                                    'name' => 'Product name',
                                    'caption' => 'Accomplished!',
                                    'link' => 'http://www.xxxxxxx.com/',
                                    'description' => $postMessage,
                                    'picture' => 'http://www.xxxxxxx.com/images/productImage.png'));

Any ideas why the Facebook API thinks this user does not exist?

How about sharing your code with us? what fields you are sending with the request? — ifaour, May 05 '11 at 08:13

Daniel · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-01T16:31:17.047

26

I had this issue, later I realised I was saving the uid in my database as an integer, however, new facebook profiles have very long uids, such as : 100004409446248, this was not a value I could save as an integer in my mysql database, I changed this to treat it as a varchar, so now there's no issue

edited Feb 01 '13 at 16:31

answered Aug 05 '11 at 16:49

Daniel

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Why didn't u just use a `BIGINT` instead of a VARCHAR? – Noam Feb 10 '14 at 14:11
4

a `BIGINT` would certainly cover the ID above. However, Facebook documentation note the user ID as being "numeric string", other IDs (albums, apps, comments) are documented as being "string", so I would use a string storage rather then a numerical storage. It may be that some IDs have 0 prefixes which would get ignored by using a numeric storage. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/user/ – Daniel Feb 10 '14 at 14:17
This claims an unsigned 64bit is enough, though not official docs. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7138119/saving-facebook-id-as-int-or-varchar – Noam Feb 10 '14 at 14:40

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

1

This question Getting list of Facebook friends with latest API suggests

$friends = $facebook->api('/me/friends');

edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

Community

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answered May 05 '11 at 05:13

0xAli

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I'm not even trying anything that complicated, just trying to post to a users stream. They have given us publish_stream and offline access. – Chris Masterton May 05 '11 at 23:46

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 10 '12 at 06:12

I wrote two library routine for get integer querystrings. Similar to Dainel's experience when I use the intval() function, I get an invalid Facebook id cause produce that error.

Code:

function get_int($field) {
    $value = 0;
    if(isset($_GET[$field])) $value = intval($_GET[$field]);
    return $value;
}

I use the get_str for facebook_id and problem was gone.

function get_str($field) {
    $value = '';
    if(isset($_GET[$field])) $value = $_GET[$field];
    return $value;
}

score -3 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 04 '12 at 15:54

-3

Define APP ID as integer, not string!

answered Feb 04 '12 at 15:54

elo

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Facebook PHP throwing exception "(#803) Some of the aliases you requested do not exist"

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