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I would like to execute an FQL query for retrieving all the public events in a specific area (using longitude,latitude and maximum distance or simply location name). Do you know if it's possible?

Apparently, somebody is able to do it, somehow: http://elmcity.info/fb_events?location=tokyo

Kara
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Claus
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  • possible duplicate of [Get event list based on location](http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/9339936/get-event-list-based-on-location) – DMCS Jun 04 '12 at 22:51
  • You will find your answer in this question. http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/9339936/get-event-list-based-on-location Hope it still works!! – DMCS Jun 04 '12 at 22:52

4 Answers4

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It is possible indeed to receive events using location based "search" To do so you'll need the longitude and latitude coordinates of the location you want to search and a access_token with user_events permission (i think you could also use the public search)

Here's an FQL example how can you get all the events nearby of a location. (this searches from your and your friends events):

$lat = "40";
$long = "30";

// using offset gives us a "square" on the map from where to search the events
$offset = 0.4;

$events = 'SELECT pic_big, name, venue, location, start_time, eid FROM event WHERE eid IN (SELECT eid FROM event_member WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = me()) AND start_time > '. $created_time .' OR uid = me()) AND start_time > '. $created_time .' AND venue.longitude < \''. ($long+$offset) .'\' AND venue.latitude < \''. ($lat+$offset) .'\' AND venue.longitude > \''. ($long-$offset) .'\' AND venue.latitude > \''. ($lat-$offset) .'\' ORDER BY start_time ASC '. $limit;

The trick itself lies in the venue.longitude and venue.latitude useage. To get events from a city, just get the city coordinates and adjust the offset to your needs. If you don't know how to use FQL please look into Facebook PHP SDK

DMCS
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I'm wrestling with this same problem right now. It does not look possible. There are several problems I see:

  • the location fields are not searchable in the page or place tables,
  • the way event locations are populated is inconsistent: See this page's events for an example. (I personally populated most of these. These are FB changes, not user error.),
  • FQL does not have an AS statement to query based on the result of a calculation, and
  • Facebook limits the amount of items returned by a query to some fairly low value.

What the referenced site seems to do is query event.description for the presence of the input string. Query "IKEA", and you'll get lots of results. Definitely not a geo search. (BTW, the site's source code is on GitHub).

Edit:

Okay, I was wrong. Facebook does expose a search method, but only in the Graph API. Using the batch request functionality, you could execute a series of requests that:

  • Find all place entries within a distance (in meters) of a known lat/long. The graph api accepts q=* for the search string to return all places.
  • Query event to find all events at the places returned above.

I'm going to play with this. I'll update this post again as I flesh out this code better.

cpilko
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  • You're perfectly right. I really don't understand why limiting the research to the description field. That API would be much more powerful! – Claus Jun 04 '12 at 18:15
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    http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/9339936/get-event-list-based-on-location has a good way to get events by location. Hope it still works!! – DMCS Jun 04 '12 at 22:52
  • @DMCS That's a good one. I'll have to give it a try to see if it still works. – cpilko Jun 05 '12 at 00:01
  • I've tried it: 1) Is it my impression,or it's extremely slow? 2) it gives you the possibility to retrieve only event where your friends are going to. It is quite limiting. Anyway better than nothing – Claus Jun 05 '12 at 00:06
  • @cpilko, can you post an example as soon something start working? I will do the same If I'm able to get it right. Thanks! – Claus Jun 06 '12 at 12:48
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try this code worked for me returns all details of the upcoming public event which contains a specific key word that can be your location 

SELECT eid,name,description,venue,creator,location,ticket_uri,start_time, eid,host,not_replied_count,pic_square,pic_big,unsure_count,attending_count,declined_count,all_members_count FROM event WHERE start_time > now() AND CONTAINS("your location name") AND privacy='open'
Ameen Maheen
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I believe that in http://elmcity.info/fb_events?location=tokyo they are not really searching for events in Tokyo, they simply executing a query like this

https://graph.facebook.com/search?type=event&q=tokyo

(access token is needed, see https://developers.facebook.com/tools/explorer?method=GET&path=search%3Ftype%3Devent%26q%3Dhaifa)

Note that this url also works http://elmcity.info/fb_events?location=sport

I'm also looking for a way to retrieve public events using fql and so far I didn't find any.

Gilad
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