Facebook : Getting the friends list with PHP return JSON format

Problem :

How to get friends list in Facebook with PHP in Json format?

Solution :

Use Facebook SDK https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends

Below is a code fragment in CodeIgniter/PHP on achieving the desired result.

 <?php
 $fb_config = array(
 'appId' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxx',
 'secret' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx',
 'cookie' => TRUE
 );
 $this->load->library('facebook', $fb_config);
 $user = $this->facebook->getUser();

 if ($user) {
 try {
 $data['user_profile'] = $this->facebook->api('/me');
 } catch (FacebookApiException $e) {
 $user = null;
 }
 }

 if ($user) { //ok, the user exist, proceed
 $access_token = $this->facebook->getAccessToken();

 $file = file_get_contents('https://graph.facebook.com/me/friends?access_token=' . $access_token);


 $jsonFriends = json_decode($file, true);
 $Friends = $jsonFriends['data'];
 }
 ?>

The important part is to save the returned result from Facebook into a file and the decode the result with Json decode function in PHP.

Hope this solution will assist your project.