Facebook API friends ids access on iOS

Question

I’m facing issues with Facebook API trying to implement a social app that accesses all friends from a user’s FB profile to be selectively marked (a bool flag) and synchronized with a backend so these marks remain until the friends have installed the app. The unique way to identify the friends is to use their FB ids, but as far as I read FB docs, they have strongly restricted their API starting with v2.0. Real FB ids are accessible only with friends request and it returns only friends that installed the app. I need all the friends in my app, so I tried to use invitable_friends and taggable_friends requests but they return only temporal ids for special usage such as invitation or tagging users. I also tried iOS FB Contact synchronization to extract ids, but not all friends are synchronized this way, only a few who attached special info to their profile.

My question is there a way to obtain real FB ids of all friends on iOS, so I’m able to identify them uniquely on the backend?

Answer 1

For what you want to achieve, there is no way anymore to get ALL friends, i am afraid. invitable_friends is for inviting friends only, taggable_friends is for tagging friends only.

Btw, you don´t even get "real" IDs of the friends who authorized your App already, those are only "App Scoped IDs", only available in that App.

It does not really matter though, because you can always call /me/friends again and see if another friend authorized your App already. You can also update the list for those other friends then.