Extract Facebook Events to import in Drupal

What is this article about?

This document gives an example on how to extract facebook events using a Drupal 7 module

What does this document cover?

Why do I need to extract facebook events?
Requirements
The module

Why do I need to extract facebook events?

I have built a website devote to Turkish Jazz. I am listing Jazz events in town, doing that manually is a lot of work. Since nearly all the venues are sharing the events on FB, I have decided to grab the data from their facebook pages. Using a single API (facebook graph API) also reduces the amount of work for different venues.

Requirements

You need to register an app to Facebook.
Install Facebook OAuth module for drupal and configure the module as described.
Associate your drupal user with your drupal user from the /user page. This will give authentication to make calls to facebook.

The module


function YOUR_MODULE_menu(){
  $items = array();
  
  $items['events_importer'] = array( 
      'title' => 'event importer',
      'description' => 'super event importer',
      'page callback' => 'YOUR_MODULE_event_importer', 
      'access callback' => TRUE,
      'type' => MENU_NORMAL_ITEM,
  );
  
  return $items;
}

YOUR_MODULE_menu will create a url like /events_importer


/**
 * Implements hook_fboauth_actions().
 */
function YOUR_MODULE_fboauth_actions() {
  $actions['YOUR_MODULE_event_import'] = array(
    'title' => t('Event import'),
    'callback' => 'YOUR_MODULE_fboauth_action_event_import',
  );
  return $actions;
}

YOUR_MODULE_fboauth_actions hooks an action, you may leave it as it is.


function YOUR_MODULE_fboauth_action_event_import($app_id, $access_token) {

  $venues = YOUR_MODULE_venue_fb_ids();
  
  $tsv = "venue	title	musicians	image	startdate	enddate	description	cost	id\n";
  
  foreach ($venues as $venue_name=>$venue_fb_id) {
    $page_events = fboauth_graph_query('/'.$venue_fb_id.'/events?time_filter=upcoming&fields=id,cover,description,end_time,start_time,name', $access_token);
    foreach ($page_events->data as $event_obj) {
      $event_data = YOUR_MODULE_individual_event($venue_name,$event_obj,$access_token);

      if($event_data["musicians"]!=="") {
        $tsv .= $event_data["venue"] . "\t" . $event_data["name"] . "\t" . $event_data["musicians"] . "\t" . $event_data["picture"] . "\t" . $event_data["start_time"] . "\t" . $event_data["end_time"]  . "\t" . /*$event_data["description"]*/ "  "  . "\t" . $event_data["cost"] . "\t" . $event_data["id"] . "\n";
      }
    }
  }
  file_save_data($tsv,'public://event_importer.tsv',$replace = FILE_EXISTS_RENAME);
  drupal_goto("/events_importer");
  
}

YOUR_MODULE_fboauth_action_event_import hook action, trig this function where all the magic happens.

We got the venue IDs,
Set a tsv file header,
Make a request to FB to get the list of events per each venue
Format the event data by sending it to YOUR_MODULE_individual_event
Registers a line to the tsv file for the event detail
Save the tsv file


function YOUR_MODULE_individual_event($venue,$event_obj,$access_token) {
  $description = trim(preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $event_obj->description));
  $musicians = YOUR_MODULE_populate_musicians($description);
  $cost = YOUR_MODULE_populate_cost($description);
  $event_data = array(
  	  "description" => $description,
      "end_time" => $event_obj->end_time,
      "start_time" => $event_obj->start_time,
      "name" => $event_obj->name,
      "id" => $event_obj->id,
      "picture" => $event_obj->cover->source,
      "venue" => $venue,
      "musicians" => $musicians,
      "cost" => $cost
  );
  return $event_data;
}

YOUR_MODULE_individual_event format the event data.

Get the list of the musicians from the json view, i do this because if there are no jazz musicians mentioned in the event description, I filter that event as a none jazz event.
Get the cost from the description,
Format the data end return


function YOUR_MODULE_populate_musicians($description) {
  $raw = drupal_http_request("https://www.turkishjazz.org/artists-json");
  $raw_arr = json_decode($raw->data);
  
  $musicians = "";
  foreach ($raw_arr as $artist) {
  	if(strpos($description,$artist->title) !== false) {
  	  $musicians .= $artist->title . ",";
  	}
  }
  $musicians = rtrim($musicians,",");
  
  return $musicians;
}

YOUR_MODULE_populate_musicians format the event data.

I have created a JSON view in /artists-json so I get a list of the musicians from my database and return the data


function YOUR_MODULE_populate_cost($description) {
  $event_cost_data = preg_match_all("/(:|\s|:\s|;|;\s)(\d{2,3})(\s|.|.-|\s.-|\s.-\s)TL/i",$description,$matches);
  $event_cost = "-";
  if($matches[2][0]>0) {
    $event_cost = $matches[2][0] . "USD";
  }
  return $event_cost;
}

YOUR_MODULE_populate_cost format the event data.

Get the cost from the description by a regular expression


function YOUR_MODULE_event_importer() {
  return fboauth_action_display('YOUR_MODULE_event_import');
}

YOUR_MODULE_event_importer the event importer page.



function YOUR_MODULE_venue_fb_ids() {
  
  $venues = array(
  	  "The Badau İstanbul" => 167317496965160,
      "Nardis Jazz" => 8482520218,
      "Kaset Mitanni" => 215803695103308,
      "Tamirane" => 210613578979409,
      "DasDas" => 136827509664438,
      "Zorlu PSM Studio" => 132312760706407,
      "Jazz Company/ Elite World İstanbul Hotel" => 272245359480852,
      "Moda Kayıkhane" => 141314409760781,
      "Living Room" => 169035839811731,
      "BOVA" => 179019409325003
  );
  return $venues;
}

YOUR_MODULE_venue_fb_ids manually enter the venue FB IDs in this array.

Now visit /events_importer, click on the button, then it will create a file called “event_importer.tsv” in your public files directory. You can use this tsv file to create a feed to automate the import process by using Drupal Feeds module.