Using the Graph API

Now that we have a bit of code to work with, it is actually time to take a look at one of the main components of the Facebook platform, the Graph API. To understand the rhetoric behind a lot of the terminology used, it is worth pointing out that a lot of the concepts are based on the discipline of graph theory. Graph theory is a branch of discrete mathematics that studies the mathematics of relationship modeling between objects in a collection. These objects are referred to as nodes (or vertices) with connections between them named edges.

With the Graph API, the nodes are the photos, events, comments, friends, tags, groups, pages: anything to which Facebook gives developers access. Each of these objects has a unique identifier that allows you to fetch that specific node from the graph. The edges of the graphs are your friends, likes, or notes; all of the different ways in which Facebook allows you to express connections to others.