Facebook graph api - some pages return empty data set

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to fetch data from Facebook, using the graph API.

The request I make looks like this: http://graph.facebook.com/<page_name>/, it returns basic data about the page. If I do request for: http://graph.facebook.com/<page_name/feed/, I get a json with data from this page's feed.

There are some pages that require authentication to access them - for example the Smirnoff page (http://graph.facebook.com/Smirnoff) and some others "alcohol" pages (I think). So I generated access_token for the application I'm using, giving it the permisssions to access my account. Now I'm able to fetch the basic data for Smirnoff, but whenever I try to access lower-level data (like feed or posts), I get an empty array in json:

{
   "data": [

   ]
}

Is there any way to get to this data from the API? Or is it blocked by page owner? Or maybe my authorized application needs extra permissions?

Answer 1

Much of the content you are trying to access is only available through the API if you are an administrator of that page. When you receive an empty array as a result it is almost always the case that the access token provided doesn't have permission to access what you are requesting. If the access token was invalid, then the API would actually throw an error.