Using FB json data file to create spreadsheet - json

Question

I've looked around for this and I know the information is out there, but I'm completely ignorant on how to do this. I need to extract just the names from the json data file on Facebook's Graph API. Here's an example of the json data.
{
"id": "POSTID",
"created_time": "2013-09-20T20:20:52+0000",
"comments": {
"data": [
{
"from": {
"name": "XXXXXXX",
"id": "XXXXXXX"
},
"id": "XXXXXXX"
},
{
"from": {
"name": "XXXXXXX",
"id": "XXXXXXX"
},
"id": "XXXXXXX"
}
I need to get just the names in a spreadsheet. How can I achieve this? Thanks a lot for your time.

Answer 1

OK, based on the comment discussion above I knocked up an example to pull the names from a Facebook Graph API - Comment Stream, using jQuery and JSONSelect as a JSON interrogator.
jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/9nqu6/1/
Once the feed is retrieved, all the work is done by JSONSelect, using a selector '.comments .data .from .name' to pick down to the level required in the feed.
The .forEach() command allows iteration on results with a callback, here just generating a table and a CSV file (using a Data URI, file name set in Chrome via the download attribute).
NB. There's no error handling on this, so be sure to pass it the correct type of URI! eg.
https://graph.facebook.com/<postid>?fields=comments.limit(1000).fields(from)
jQuery
$('#read-graph').on('click', function() {
var graphLink = $('#graph-link').val();
if (!graphLink) {
alert("Enter link");
return false;
}
graphLink = graphLink + (/\?/.test(graphLink) ? "&" : "?") + "callback=?"
$.getJSON(graphLink, function(data) {
var nameBlock = $('#name-block');
nameBlock.find('tr').remove();
var csvData = "data:application/csv;charset=utf-8,Index%2CName%2C%0A";
var cIndex = 0;
JSONSelect.forEach('.comments .data .from .name', data, function(cName) {
cIndex++;
nameBlock.append('<tr><td class="index">' + cIndex + '</td><td class="name">' + cName + '</td></tr>');
csvData = csvData + cIndex + "%2C" + encodeURIComponent('"' + cName.replace(/"/g, '""') + '"') + "%0A";
});
$('#download-csv').prop('href', csvData).attr('download', "FBGraph.csv").show();
});
return false;
});
HTML
<h3>Graph Link</h3>
<form>
<input id="graph-link" name="graph-link" type="text" value="" />
<input id="read-graph" name="read-graph" type="submit" value="Read Graph" />
<a id="download-csv" href="#" style="display: none;">Download CSV</a>
</form>
<table id="name-block">
</table>
CSS
#graph-link {
width: 400px;
}
#name-block {
margin-top: 10px;
border: 1px solid black;
border-collapse: collapse;
}
#name-block tr {
border-top: 1px dashed black;
}
#name-block .index {
width: 50px;
}
#name-block .name {
width: 350px;
border-left: 1px solid black;
}

Answer 2

I've written an Excel Add-In (XLL) that pulls JSON from the Facebook Graph API straight into Excel. It's available on GitHub:
https://github.com/spreadgit/XLfacebook