User Profile API

The User Profile API allows you to use a PSID to retrieve user profile information that can be used to personalize the experience of people interacting with your Messenger bot.

Contents

• Availability
  • User Opt-in
  • Profile Unavailable
• Available Profile Fields
• Retrieving a Person's Profile
• Last Ad Referral
• Error Codes

Availability

Though you may have a PSID, you may not have permission or be able to retrieve a person's profile information.

User Opt-in

The following events will authorize your Messenger bot to access a person's profile information:

• The person starts the conversation via a welcome screen and tapped the "Get Started" button.
• The person starts the conversation by clicking a "Send to Messenger" button.
• The person starts the conversation by sending a message.
• The person starts the conversation by accepting a Page's message request.
• Your Messenger bot uses the askPermission() function of the Messenger Extensions SDK in the webview to ask for the user_profile permission.

Some entry points allow you or people to initiate a conversation without giving your bot authorization to the person's public profile. In those cases, your Messenger bot will be granted permission to access user profile after the user replied to the initial message. Notable situations where a person may initiate a conversation with your Messenger bot, but not authorize profile permission include the following:

• Conversations started via a web plugin
• Conversations started via customer matching
• Conversations started by opening shared content
• Interactions started by opening a Chat Extension.
• Interactions with Messenger Conversation Ads without a user reply

Profile Unavailable

Currently, the User Profile API does not support retrieving profile information for Messenger accounts that were created using a phone number instead of a Facebook account.

In this case, the API will return error code 2018218 with the message 'No profile available for this user.'

Available Profile Fields

By default, your apps may retrieve the id, name, first_name, last_name, and profile_pic fields for user's that have made this information public and have opted-in to your bot.

Beginning July 26, 2018, apps must request access to all other profile fields as part of the app review process. To submit for access to profile fields, add the permissions you would like to request when you submit your app in the Messenger Platform tab of the app console.

The following profile fields can be requested:

Retrieving a Person's Profile

To use the User Profile API, send a GET request with the profile fields you want for the person:

curl -X GET "https://graph.facebook.com/<PSID>?fields=first_name,last_name,profile_pic&access_token=<PAGE_ACCESS_TOKEN>"

If you are allowed to view the person's profile, the User Profile API will return a JSON string with the requested fields from the person's profile.

{
  "first_name": "Peter",
  "last_name": "Chang",
  "profile_pic": "https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-1/p200x200/13055603_10105219398495383_8237637584159975445_n.jpg?oh=1d241d4b6d4dac50eaf9bb73288ea192&oe=57AF5C03&__gda__=1470213755_ab17c8c8e3a0a447fed3f272fa2179ce",
  "locale": "en_US",
  "timezone": -7,
  "gender": "male",
}

If you are not allowed to view the person's profile, an empty object is returned.

Last Ad Referral - DEPRECATED

To make it easier for developers to identify which sent a person to their bot, the details of the last click-to-Messenger ad the person was referred by may be requested in the last_ad_referral field.

Example

{
  "first_name": "Peter",
  "last_name": "Chang",
  "last_ad_referral": {
    "source": "ADS",
    "type": "OPEN_THREAD",
    "ad_id": "6045246247433"
  }
}    

Error Codes