Duplicate Event Created when Event Edited in Facebook

[Ryan]

Hey Guys,

We recently had an event that kept importing from a Facebook page and couldn’t figure out why. We came to find that the user was making updates to the event in Facebook (saying stuff like “Limited Tickets Left” or “10 tickets left”) and each time they made an update, the event imported again.

Is this expected behavior? Seems like it shouldn’t be importing again just with a simple edit to the event.

Thanks!

Matt

[Josh]

Hey Matt,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

Definitely not the ideal way for that to be working. Out of curiosity, would it be possible to get a database dump that includes the duplicated events so we can see the connection meta for the Facebook event.

Thanks!

[Ryan]

Hey Josh,

I’d be happy to help out – what would be the best way to get that info for you?

Thanks,

Matt

[Josh]

Hey Ryan,

You can grab a database backup file using a plugin such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-db-backup/ and email it to us at support[at]theeventscalendar.com. Be sure to request the information be forwarded to Josh and include a link to this thread.

Thanks!

[Ryan]

Done.

[Hunter]

Hey Ryan,

I’m jumping in here due to Josh being out on vacation, but we appreciate you sending that over. Once we’ve got more information, we’ll be sure to reply back with our findings. Thank you for the patience and have a good rest of your week!

[Ryan]

Thanks Hunter. Let me know if you need me to resend anything.

Thanks.

[Josh]

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for sending that over! I’ve spent a little time this morning trying to get the information set up on my local install but have been struggling to get it completely loaded. As an alternative, I can manually search the data to compare the necessary information.

Could you tell me the name of an event that was imported multiple times from Facebook?

Thanks!

[Ryan]

Hey Josh,

Here is the event in question:

https://pondhole.com/event/fireworks-cruise/

There are (4) deleted versions of this as well that were created when the event was updated in Facebook. The event ID for this even is 4520 if that helps.

Cheers,

Matt

[Josh]

Hey Ryan,

Thanks for following up with the additional information! I dug into the database information you provided and thought I found the information I was looking for. However, after looking closer I realized those additional versions I was seeing was due to the event being a recurring event and each had a different date.

You mentioned that you deleted the duplicated imports from Facebook. Were those deleted prior to this database dump? If not, do you have the IDs for the duplicated versions of the event?

 

Also a couple more quick questions that may be helpful here:

1. Is this an event on a page that you’re controlling or is this someone else’s page that you’re importing from onto your site?
2. Do you have other events coming from Facebook that are having the same duplication issues or was this the only one?

Thanks!

[Ryan]

Hey Josh,

I believe I deleted the event prior to the DB dump. I’ve restored one of the duplicate events (it is a passed event so I don’t mind it being an active duplicate). Here are links to both:

Correct Event – https://pondhole.com/event/fireworks-cruise/
Duplicate Event – https://pondhole.com/event/pride-steamboat-cruise/

I believe all they were doing was updating the Facebook event to add the *- 6 Tickets Left -* text.

Also, this is NOT a recurring event, this is a one-time event, so maybe you weren’t looking at the correct event? It is from 8-9:30pm on one day and the recurrence rules are set to ‘none’.

1. To answer your questions – this is a Facebook Page we have no control over, we simply use the Facebook automated imports (add-on from you guys). The event page itself (pondhole.com) we have full control over.
2. I don’t know of any others that have had the issue…but I also don’t know if people edit the events or not. I could ask them to edit an upcoming event to try to duplicate the error if you’d like.

Thanks,

Matt

[Josh]

Hey Matt,

It appears that these were imported as separate events. The event titles, content, and Facebook Event IDs are different for the two events. Also, if I look up the associated Facebook event for https://pondhole.com/event/fireworks-cruise/ it shows the page as not existed.

My guess here would be that the original events were deleted (or modified to the point where Facebook created a new Event ID for that event). If you were automated imports from certain groups then, the new event would show as a fresh event to import and why you saw the same event imported multiple times.

Unfortunately for cases like this, I’m not sure there is much we can do on our side to address these particular issues. Fortunately though, things like this shouldn’t happen that often.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

[Ryan]

Hey Josh,

Thank you for taking the time to look in to it. There are 3 more duplicates that have identical names that only have a change of how many tickets are left and I did confirm with the Facebook page owner that they were only editing…but who knows if that is accurate and maybe Facebook created new IDs when they were created.

We’ll chalk this up to either user error, or an anomaly.

Thank you for your help and I’ll reach out again if anything else comes up.

Cheers,

Matt

[Josh]

Hey Matt,

No problem.

Yeah, not sure what else would have caused it there, simple content changes shouldn’t prompt a new import.

I’ll go ahead and close this thread for now. If you have any further questions or if the issue comes back up again down the line, please don’t hesitate to open a new one.

Thanks!

[Author]

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