netvizz
A collection of scripts that help with downloading data from the Facebook platform for research purposes.
EDIT: this code is still based on v1.0 of FB's API and (most of it) no longer works. It will not get updated in the forseeable future, but kept online for documentation purposes.
This should be relatively easy to set up:
- You need a publicly accessible server running PHP (no database involved, but apparently Windows does not work - I've only tested this on Linux);
- Put the files in a directory of your choice, e.g. http://yourserver.com/netvizz/;
- In this folder, create a subdirectory named "data" and make sure that it is writeable;
- Head over to https://developers.facebook.com/ and create a new app (with "Facebook Canvas"), using the public path (e.g. http://yourserver.com/netvizz/) as the Canvas URL in the "settings" pane; there you'll also find your App ID and App Secret;
- Rename ini_example.php to ini.php and fill in the $appid and $secret variables with your values; change the $canvasurl variable to your public path (e.g. http://yourserver.com/netvizz/);