Getting user's birthday through Facebook API

Question

I'm having some troubles with the Facebook API, I am requesting permission for some information of the user by Javascript:

FB.login(function (response) {
    if (response.authResponse) {
        // authorized
    } else {
        // canceled
    }
}, {scope: 'email,user_birthday,user_location'});

Now I want to get the user's information (when he is authorized) by PHP:

$facebookUser = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://graph.facebook.com/' . $this->data['userid'] . '?access_token=' . $this->oathtoken . '&fields=id,name,location,gender,email,picture,birthday,link'));

All working great, except that the API is not giving the user's birthday back. Even when I set my birthday privacy settings on public it won't show up.

So:

echo $facebookUser['birthday']; // Gives an error, since this key does not exists

Does somebody have an idea how to fix this?

Solution 1

You are logged in on the client side but php is executed on the server side so you receive only the basic information of an user object.

If you logged in on the server side and have the permissions so you can get the birthday simply with:

echo $facebookUser['birthday'];

Solution 2

Most probably you didn't receive approval to request user_birthday from FB.

You can't get user_birthday unless FB reviews your FB app.

Only the following permissions may be requested without review: public_profile, user_friends and email (See: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/review/what-is-login-review)

Without review you can request only age_range, but not user_birthday

Comments

[qaisjp]

That doesn't answer his question though.

[CBroe]

Well, it kinda does. Since he is not using the PHP SDK, but making a simple HTTP request on his own, no access token gets passed. So he either has to pass the token from client- to server-side by himself, or read it out of a cookie, and append it to the request URL himself – or use the SDK, which should handle all of these concerns on it’s own quite nicely.

[Lumocra]

I have tried that, but that key does not exists. So it seems I have not the permission to view it. Although I am requesting it...

[Lumocra]

I am saving information in a database, and didn't want to do an extra AJAX call. That's why I used it server side. I have tried your idea, but response.user_birthday is undefined when the callback is executed.