There are several ways to get the number of users who like a particular Facebook page, we can use both Facebook API or FQL to get that number. However, I’ll supply a simplest way to do that, just a few lines of code, we don’t need to register for a new Facebook app or request allow permission or anything.
In order to get the total number of likes, you just specify the Facebook Page Id or Name and use file_get_contents() PHP function to load return JSON encoded string from Facebook. In addition, the response string should be converted to an array by using json_decode() function for easier accessing.
PHP Get Likes Number Of Facebook Page
Assume that we need to get the likes number from 2 Facebook page, one with Facebook Name (4.Rapid.Development) and one with Facebook ID (19292868552).
+ Facebook Page – 4.Rapid.Development:
<?php $result = file_get_contents("https://graph.facebook.com/4.Rapid.Development"); $result = json_decode($result,true); echo "name: " . $result["name"] . "<br>"; echo "website: " . $result["website"] . "<br>"; echo "likes: " . $result["likes"] . "<br>"; echo "<pre>"; var_dump($result); echo "</pre>"; ?> |
Output:
name: 4 Rapid Development website: http://4rapiddev.com likes: 180 array(11) { ["id"]=> string(15) "192737727433644" ["name"]=> string(19) "4 Rapid Development" ["picture"]=> string(80) "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/187791_192737727433644_418020_s.jpg" ["link"]=> string(43) "http://www.facebook.com/4.Rapid.Development" ["likes"]=> int(180) ["category"]=> string(20) "Computers/technology" ["website"]=> string(20) "http://4rapiddev.com" ["username"]=> string(19) "4.Rapid.Development" ["founded"]=> string(10) "Hoan Huynh" ["location"]=> array(2) { ["city"]=> string(16) "Ho Chi Minh City" ["country"]=> string(7) "Vietnam" } ["can_post"]=> bool(true) } |
+ Facebook Page ID 19292868552:
<?php $result = file_get_contents("https://graph.facebook.com/19292868552"); $result = json_decode($result,true); echo "name: " . $result["name"] . "<br>"; echo "website: " . $result["website"] . "<br>"; echo "likes: " . $result["likes"] . "<br>"; echo "<pre>"; var_dump($result); echo "</pre>"; ?> |
+ Output:
name: Facebook Platform website: http://developers.facebook.com likes: 3401015 array(11) { ["id"]=> string(11) "19292868552" ["name"]=> string(17) "Facebook Platform" ["picture"]=> string(80) "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-ash2/276791_19292868552_1958181823_s.jpg" ["link"]=> string(32) "http://www.facebook.com/platform" ["likes"]=> int(3401015) ["category"]=> string(15) "Product/service" ["website"]=> string(30) "http://developers.facebook.com" ["username"]=> string(8) "platform" ["founded"]=> string(4) "2007" ["company_overview"]=> string(78) "Facebook Platform enables anyone to build social apps on Facebook and the web." ["mission"]=> string(37) "To make the web more open and social." } |
As you can see in the 2 simple example above, beside the “likes” number, we can get some other information such as: name, website, link, picture, category, etc of a Facebook page easily as long as we have its Facebook ID or Name.