Facebook Query Language - FQL

It may interest you to know that the information that you can obtain from Facebook is actually stored in a database, and that's where FQL comes in. So, instead of using the API methods, we can query the tables in the database to obtain the information that we require.

For example, if you want the first name, surname, and birthday of each of your friends, then you can use the following query in the API Test Console:

     SELECT first_name, last_name,birthday
     FROM user
     WHERE uid IN (  SELECT uid1
                     FROM friend
                     WHERE uid2=614902533)

And don't forget to replace my id (614902533) with your own because you can only use the details of friends of the logged in user, that is you. Now, we still need to use the API, but for this, we only need one method—fql.query:

You'll realize of course, that this means that you're not limited to the information supplied by the API methods and the FBML tags. You're actually able to extract the exact data that you want.

Now that you're conversant with the Facebook Platform, you will want to create your first Facebook application. However, before you do that, you'll need to obtain the Facebook Client Libraries.