Not Importing Most Improtant Fields

[Derek]

The facebook importer seems to not be importing most important fields – like contact info for the events and websites, etc. Here is an example event you can test on your end.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1675517589431579/

[George]

Hey Derek,

Sorry to hear about the troubles here!

1. First, you posted a truncated version of your site’s system information. It is missing a lot of information…can you please post your COMPLETE, UN-EDITED system information to this thread so that we can best help out? Here’s how to do it! → https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/sharing-sys-info/

2. Next, I tried importing that event and found now issues and no missing data. To share my findings, here is a screenshot of the event after it has been imported to my site (click for a larger-sized image):

Please note that the venue information is imported accurately; the event start and end times; the organizer of the event; event description; etc…

3. If you are looking for any event information to be imported that is NOT visible in the screenshot I shared above, then what specific other information are you hoping to see imported? If possible please share a screenshot of where this information is visible on the Facebook.com version of the event itself. You can do so by uploading the screenshots to this thread. If you have issues with that, you can upload to Imgur.com, Flickr.com, CloudUp.com, or any similar image-hosting site; then just share the links to those images here and I’ll take a look.

Thank you!
George

[Derek]

This reply is private.

[George]

This reply is private.

[Derek]

Well in this particular case it is not importing the website for purchasing tickets but in others it is not importing the phone numbers or websites. In most all, (unless they happen to put contact info in description) there is no way for a user to have contact info for the event.

[George]

Thanks for clarifying a bit here Derek.

I’m sorry to keep asking for details, but:
1. Can you please link to a Facebook event that, upon import, has its ticket-purchase website omitted? Or its phone number?
2. Please clarify what piece of information is omitted from the event after import.
3. Please share a screenshot of where this information is visible on the Facebook.com version of the event. You can do so by uploading the screenshots to this thread. If you have issues with that, you can upload to Imgur.com, Flickr.com, CloudUp.com, or any similar image-hosting site; then just share the links to those images here and I’ll take a look.

I will then try to import this event and see what I find.

Thanks for your patience here!
George

[Derek]

1.) The event I gave in first post on this thread. If you click on it you will see the url for getting tickets.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1675517589431579/

2.) On this one the url for getting tickets but on others it is the website of event or telephone numbers.

3.) As I said if you click on the link you can see it directly.

[George]

Thanks @Derek.

I do not believe the value of that “tickets link” field is accessible to our plugins via the Facebook API. This is also true for phone numbers, I believe. 🙁

I am double-checking these facts with some developers on our team and will report back with a confirmation — these values are either outright inaccessible via the API, or if they are accessible with the API, our plugins unfortunately do not currently support those value and would not be able to without extensive custom coding.

Sorry to bear this news; stay tuned for a confirmation or modification of the claims made here!

Sincerely,
George

[Derek]

Not to sound harsh but with a website link and phone numbers it is pretty much pointless. So people can see the description and maybe location if it has one but have no way to contact anyone? Doesn’t make sense. These fields are standard in facebook and if people actually follow the proper fields then the info that is imported is basically worthless and will actually just annoy people when they see a cool event is happening but have no way to get to it.

Most of the events my users will be attending are webinars. without a website to go to in order to sign up it is really worthless. I don’t get why they wouldnt add that in with this new aggregator release…

[George]

Hi Derek,

I understand your frustrations and agree with you that these features should be added to our importing. We are working on adding these fields to Event Aggregator imports; since the introduction of Event Aggregator, there is now new feature development on the “legacy” importer plugins, of which Facebook Importer is one.

Aggregator is a brand new product that was just launched, so there are certainly many improvements already on the horizon — adding these extra event fields is one such set of improvements.

These fields have not always existed on Facebook nor have they always existed in the API, so that is why they weren’t existent in the original versions of Facebook Importer.

Sorry to bear some of the not-ideal news here, @Derek. Please let me know what you think and if there are any other questions I can try to help with!

— George

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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