Why does Facebook Credits callback payments_get_items occasionally not pass user ID?

Question

Our facebook canvas app is having this problem where now, several times a day, the credits callback is passing a signed_request with the following contents:

Array
(
    [algorithm] => HMAC-SHA256
    [credits] => Array
        (
            [order_id] => 9005967273834
            [order_info] => "item104"
        )

    [issued_at] => 1319329443
    [user] => Array
        (
            [country] => do
            [locale] => es_LA
            [age] => Array
                (
                    [min] => 0
                    [max] => 12
                )
        )
)

Notice anything missing? That's right! No user_id, buyer, or receiver is given!

We can't tell facebook what the price or description of an item is without knowing who is receiving the item.

This seems like a bad bug! This problem started happening on Oct 11, 2011

Answer 1

This is definitely an intermittent bug, so the only work-around is to pass the user ID from your own code into the order_info field of the item. Then use that instead of the credits receiver if the user information is missing.

I don't like that I have to do this, but it seems necessary.