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The getFacebookPhotos snippet can be used to generate listings of albums and photos on a facebook profile (user or page). In the current version, it only works for public data. All data is extensively cached to save performance - if you need more to-the-minute accurate stuff you can play with the cache properties.

As getFacebookPhotos uses its own caching mechanisms, you can call getFacebookPhotos uncached.

Available Properties

This list of properties is current as of version 1.0.0. Required properties are in bold.

Property Accepted Values Description Default Value
user ID or name The name or ID of the user or page you want to retrieve photos from. For example "modxcms" for the MODX facebook page.
albums comma separated list of IDs or names If you want to show only a selection of albums, you can fill in either the name or the IDs of the albums here as a comma separated list. As it's possible to change the name of an album, you'll want to use the ID if you can.
perAlbum 1 or 0 Group images per album. This enables use of the albumTpl property, which is used as wrapper for each album. 1 (true)
Templates & Output
albumTpl name of a chunk The chunk to use as wrapper for the collection of images from a specific album. Is only used when perAlbum is enabled. See Templating - albumTpl below.
albumSeparator anything String to use as glue between albums. <br />
outerTpl name of a chunk The chunk to use as wrapper for the entire result including albums and their images. See Templating - outerTpl below.
photoTpl name of a chunk The chunk to use for individual images. See Templating - photoTpl below.
photoSeparator anything String to use as glue between images. \n (linebreak)
Pagination
offset number Where to start in the result set for getPage pagination or if you want to skip some of the first items. 0
limit number Amount of items per page for getPage pagination or to show in total when not paginating. 20
Caching
cacheOutput 1 or 0 When enabled, the output (including chunk contents) will be cached for even better performance. Note that in this case you will need to specifically set a different option on the snippet, empty the core/cache/socialsuite/_processed/facebook/photos/ directory manually or wait for the image or album cache to expire before seeing changes to tpl chunks. Disabled by default. 0 (false)
cacheExpires number (seconds) The time in seconds the album cache is valid for. The album cache contains a list of album names and their IDs as well as the raw data returned from facebook's Graph API. When albums are requested, all of their images are also requested in one big query instead of a number of smaller ones - this resulted in much better performance overall. 172800 (= 2 days)
cacheExpiresPhotos number (seconds) The time in seconds the photos cache is valid for. Also see the cacheExpiresPhotosVariation, below. Photos are cached per album and the cache contains the raw data returned from Facebook's Graph API using FQL. This time can not be bigger than the time in cacheExpires, as whenever we fetch the albums, all photos for that album are also retrieved and will be refreshed. So yes, if you are paying attention: the default value here indeed doesn't make much sense :P 345600 (= 4 days)
cacheExpiresPhotosVariation number (seconds) When the cacheExpiresPhotos time is smaller than the cacheExpires time, this means the cache of images in specific albums will be refreshed before the complete album cache is refreshed. This means we may see photos added to specific albums *before* new albums are visible.

As the album cache retrieves all albums and all their photos in one big optimized query, we can see a performance hit when all of a sudden just the photos cache has expired and all visible albums suddenly start making small queries to facebook. This cacheExpiresPhotosVariation properties negates that effect by spreading out the time the photos cache expires.

So if you have getFacebookPhotos configured to show three albums with a cacheExpires time of 2 days, and a cacheExpiresPhotos of 12 hours, we will see that every 12 hours there are 3 requests to facebook for the photos in those specific albums. If we wouldn't have cacheExpiresPhotosVariation, the expiry time for each album would be equal, and one poor visitor would have to wait for 3 requests to come back from Facebook (which isn't neccessarily fast with this kind of thing). Now enter cacheExpiresPhotosVariation. If it's set to 1 hour (the default), this means that the photo cache for each album gets a cache expiry time which is within 1 hour from what is set on cacheExpiresPhotos: so in our example anything (randomly) between 11 and 13 hours. This means there's no one poor visitor waiting for 3 requests to facebook to come back, but there's 3 visitors each only taking a small hit. Win-win-win-win! | 3600 ( = 1 hour) |

Templating

For templating your Facebook photo feed, we can use three different template chunks. There's the photoTpl which is used for each individual photo, the albumTpl for wrapping albums if perAlbum is enabled, and outerTpl which throws it all together.

This section will give you information on defaults and available placeholders for you to use.

photoTpl

The default chunk is as follows:

<li>
    <img src="[[+src_small]]" width="[[+src_small_width]]" height="[[+src_small_height]]" />
</li>

These are all the placeholders to use in the photoTpl chunk. Some may not be available due to permissions.

Placeholder Type Description
object_id int The object_id of the photo.
pid string The ID of the photo being queried. The pid cannot be longer than 50 characters.
aid string The ID of the album containing the photo being queried. The aid cannot be longer than 50 characters.
owner string The user ID of the owner of the photo being queried.
src_small string The URL to the thumbnail version of the photo being queried. The image can have a maximum width of 75px and a maximum height of 225px. This URL may be blank.
src_small_width int Width of the thumbnail version, in px. This field may be blank.
src_small_height int Height of the thumbnail version, in px. This field may be blank.
src_big string The URL to the full-sized version of the photo being queried. The image can have a maximum width or height of 960px
src_big_width int Width of the full-sized version, in px. This field may be blank.
src_big_height int Height of the full-sized version, in px. This field may be blank.
src string The URL to the album view version of the photo being queried. The image can have a maximum width or height of 130px. This URL may be blank
src_width int Width of the album view version, in px. This field may be blank.
src_height int Height of the album view version, in px. This field may be blank.
link string The URL to the page on facebook containing the photo being queried.
caption string The caption for the photo being queried.
created time (unix) The date when the photo being queried was added. Format with the "date" output filter.
modified time (unix) The date when the photo being queried was last modified. Format with the "date" output filter.
position int The position of the photo in the album.
album_object_id int The object_id of the album the photo belongs to.
place_id int Facebook ID of the place associated with the photo, if any.
images array An array of objects containing width, height, source each representing the various photo sizes. Use as [[+images.2.source]].
like_info object The like information of the photo being queried. This is an object containing can_like, like_count, and user_likes
comment_info object The comment information of the photo being queried. This is an object containing can_comment and comment_count
can_delete bool true if the viewer is able to delete the photo

albumTpl

The default albumTpl chunk is as follows; please keep in mind you need to have perAlbum enabled in order to use this.

 <h2><a href="[[+link]]">[[+name]]</a> <span>([[+photo_count]] photos, created on [[+created:date=`%d/%m/%Y`]])</span></h2>
<div>
    <ul>
        [[+photos]]
    </ul>
</div>

You have access to the following placeholders; some may not be available due to permissions:

Placeholder Type Description
photos The photos in this album, as parsed through the photoTpl chunk.
aid string The album ID
object_id int The object_id of the album on Facebook. This is used to identify the equivalentAlbum object in the Graph API. You can also use the object_id to let users comment on an album with the Graph API Comments
owner int The user ID of the owner of the album
cover_pid string The album cover photo ID string
cover_object_id int The album cover photo object_id
name string The title of the album
created time (unix) The time the photo album was initially created expressed as a unix time.
modified time (unix) The last time the photo album was updated expressed as a unix time.
description string The description of the album
location string The location of the album
size int
link string A link to this album on Facebook
visible string Visible only to the album owner. Indicates who can see the album.
modified_major time (unix) Indicates the time a major update (like addition of photos) was last made to the album expressed as a unix time.
edit_link string The URL for editing the album
type string The type of photo album, can be profile, mobile, wall or normal.
can_upload bool Determines whether a given UID can upload to the album.
photo_count int The number of photos in this album
video_count int The number of videos in the album
like_info object The like information of the album being queried. This is an object containingcan_like, like_count, and user_likes
comment_info object The comment information of the album being queried. This is an object containing can_comment and comment_count

outerTpl

The default outerTpl is the following:

 <ul>
    [[+photos]]
</ul>

and you can only use the "photos" placeholder in this template.

Examples

Man, so many possibilities!

Simple Example, grouping all photos per album with default tpls

Snippet call:

[[!getFacebookPhotos?
    &user=`modxcms`
    &perAlbum=`1`
]]

which without any customization results in the following output:

<h2><a href="http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=437577137979&id=19110642979&aid=235059">Profile Pictures</a> <span class="smalldate">(1 photos, created on 12/09/2010)</span></h2>
<div class="gfp-photos-wrapper">
    <ul>
        <li class="gfp-photo">
    <img src="http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/179529_10150898281902980_465676445_t.jpg" width="75" height="75" />
</li>

    </ul>
</div>
<br />


<h2><a href="http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=10150883337702980&id=19110642979&aid=434455">CMS Expo 2012</a> <span class="smalldate">(33 photos, created on 12/05/2012)</span></h2>
<div class="gfp-photos-wrapper">
    <ul>
        <li class="gfp-photo">
    <img src="http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/529915_10150883341757980_1041537877_t.jpg" width="75" height="56" />
</li>

<li class="gfp-photo">
    <img src="http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/537753_10150883341637980_1323647473_t.jpg" width="75" height="56" />
</li>
<!-- ... -->
<li class="gfp-photo">
    <img src="http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/534903_10150883337842980_1414876671_t.jpg" width="75" height="50" />
</li>

    </ul>
</div>
<!-- ... -->