Facebook import issues

[adamas]

Hi,

I have set up a portal and I running into some issues when I import facebook events:
– Venue information is not properly updated (I’ve seen this is already known)
– Organizer information is not properly updated
– In both cases the only information fetched is the name
– In both cases the permalink for venues/organizers is failing showing a 404 error
Are you already working on this?
Thanks!

[adamas]

This reply is private.

[Barry]

Hi!

With regards to the first issue – yes, we are aware of this and a fix is in the works (in fact, it should be available shortly when our next maintenance release rolls out).

With regards to the second question, can I ask first of all that you avoid using private replies unless you are sharing confidential information? Keeping things open just helps to make it easier for others to research similar issues/topics.

I am trying to import facebook events from a personal page using events ID. So far I am doing this almost automatically as I am fetching facebook ics file and extracting a list with all events IDs. Then I copy&paste this list into your text box.

That’s a great idea!

Is there any way to automate this? I think it should be really easy to do a script so I can just feed your php with my list (or lists)

I don’t see why not, there are a number of publicly accessible methods you might leverage in a custom solution – but this is something where we’d really need to leave it to you to dig in and figure things out, as it is very much a custom development task 🙂

when the events IDs list is “large” (I am trying about >200) the process stucks (on the web) and it answers a timeout

Right – I guess it wasn’t really designed for quite that number of IDs/objects to be imported manually … and, indeed, it sounds like you are essentially trying to use a feature designed for manual import as part of an automated solution.

One possibility is that you could work with your web host to increase the execution time available to PHP per request, beyond that you are also welcome to post a request for this feature to be enhanced so it avoids timeouts either by redirecting back to itself when necessary or else by using an ajax updater or something of that order.

And finally a request: As I am willing to “link” somehow my page with facebook, would it be possible to have a list with current attendees?

Again you are more than welcome to post feature requests or add your support to any suitable existing requests over on UserVoice – we review every request and are happy to add new features and functionality wherever it makes sense to do so 🙂

Thanks!

[adamas]

Some good and bad news:
– Thanks to the new version venues and organizers are being imported as they should… so great!
– About automating the import of individual facebook events… I have done that already (blessed php-curl!) and it was working fine… until today!
– As I am importing individual events I thought I can remove the facebook App ID/secret. I discovered that this was a mistake and it stopped working so I have added it again… but now… I can import the same event multiple times! Before I have seen 3 possible messages:
— The event does not exist or is private
— The event has been imported
— The event is already in DDBB so it is skipped
But now no matter what, it is created every single time! (only the event is being re-added, venue and organizer still keeps as one)
Could you please help? I am running this as the core of my site and I am currently importing more than 1300 events from facebook… (yes, no kidding 🙂 )
Thanks!

[adamas]

Some tests: I have done the following:
– restart php, webserver and mysql (no success)
– remove any references to a specific event ID and try to add them again multiple times (didn’t work, I put the same event ID 2 times in the text box and I had a message telling me that both events had been imported)
– disable the plugin and re-enable again (didn’t work)
– I have checked the DDBB and the events are the same except for the post-name which has an ending “-X” (the post title is also the same, referencing the facebook event ID)

[Barry]

OK, but unfortunately if these issues all relate to the automated import of events from individual/personal Facebook pages that’s really something we’d have to leave to you to resolve, I’m afraid.

If I’m misunderstanding and you’re hitting problems in the course of ordinary use, though, definitely let me know.

[adamas]

Barry you have misunderstood me. That is happening from the plugin itself. From the import page, I copy&paste the same event ID 2 or 3 times and the event is inserted 2/3 times. The same. No errors…

[Barry]

OK … that sounds like something where we should possibly make an adjustment – but could you simply avoid posting the same ID multiple times?

[adamas]

I am working on that as part of my script, but as I have seen that you are doing some checks to avoid this, I thought you’ll be glad to know. In my case it seems that something else has broken as there are some events pointing to “www.site.com/event/” rather than “www.site.com/event/evento1” (and these events appear on any view but single event).

Does it makes any sense to you?

In my case and as I can retrieve the events again from FB I am going to clean the DDBB and import all objects again. Then I’ll run the script again to check if something else fails…

[Barry]

I am working on that as part of my script, but as I have seen that you are doing some checks to avoid this, I thought you’ll be glad to know.

We definitely are, I just wanted to better understand why this was happening 🙂

In my case it seems that something else has broken as there are some events pointing to “www.site.com/event/” rather than “www.site.com/event/evento1″ (and these events appear on any view but single event).

Does it makes any sense to you?

I’d really need more details – but please remember we try hard to stick to one issue per thread, as covered previously. We’re happy to help, but long threads covering many separate problems tend to take longer to solve than separate, focused threads.

At this point then it sounds like you’re making progress with your automated script but have a stumbling block in that it can insert the same ID multiple times into the relevant field, however that’s really something we need to leave for you to resolve (though we’ll certainly make a note to look into this as I guess it’s possible someone might do the same thing manually). With that in mind I’ll go ahead and close this thread, but please do open new threads as needed for other specific issues such as the missing event slug.

Thanks!

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