Facebook Cookbook

Retrieving Metrics for a Date Range

Problem

I need to retrieve some of my app’s metrics for the last 30 days.

Solution

Since the date field is in epoch seconds, you need to do a conversion before you can query on it:

<?php
$hoursAhead = 3;
$period = 2592000; // 86400 = one day, 604800 = one week, 2592000 = one month

$yesterday = mktime($hoursAhead,0,0,date("m"),date("d")-1,date("Y"));
$monthAgo = mktime($hoursAhead,0,0,date("m"),date("d")-30,date("Y"));
$query = 'SELECT active_users from metrics WHERE end_time = ' .
$yesterday . ' AND period = ' . $period . ';';
$metrics = $facebook->api_client->fql_query($query);
?>

The variable metrics will now contain an array with a single element that contains the active_users for the 30-day period ending yesterday.

Discussion

The hours ahead of PST is important because Facebook calculates metrics at midnight PST and considers a day from midnight to 11:59:59 p.m. PST. You should always set your date ranges based on that time zone. See Formatting Relative Time for more information about epoch seconds.