Search code examples
androidfacebook-sdk-3.1

Android Facebook SDK - HelloFacebookSample "Pick some friends" option displays empty screen


Running a freshly installed Facebook SDK v3.15.0 for Android, clicking "Pick Some Friends" button, launched the facebook friends picker, but shows no friends at all. I'de expect it to show a list of all my friends, letting me pick one.

Suggestions?


Solution

  • On April 2014, Facebook have made a breaking change to "friends list" functionality.

    In short, when an application requests a list of the user's friends, it will only get back the list of friends that are also using the same app, and logged-in to facebook using it. It also requires a new permission 'user_friends' that should be asked for when logging the user in.

    Thus, the lists comes up empty, as none of my friends are using the sample app.

    Note: this change of API is breaking the most basic social feature i.e. "list of my friends". In addition, it breaks simple applications such as a "birthday reminder".

    Facebook is allowing access to the old API (which does allow listing of all friends) until April 2015. Let's hope they realize they made a mistake by then, and change the semantics to how it was before.