Facebook Request dialog returning invalid user IDs

Question

I have an iOS app in which users are rewarded for inviting their Facebook friends through the Request dialog, and after the invitation is sent I parse the Response Data to save the recipients users IDs in the database for verification purposes.

Recently I started noticing that some invalid user IDs are being returned by the Request dialog, for instance, in this response data:

Printing description of urlParams:
{
    request = 311467829003384;
    "to[0]" = 300265810135854;
    "to[1]" = 641443489259412;
}

I'm led to believe these user IDs are invalid because if I try to open the following url I get an error:

https://www.facebook.com/300265810135854

By the way, I'm using Facebook iOS SDK 3.14.1. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

They are both valid. They are App Scoped User IDs that we started return in v2.0. You can read more about it on https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog. If you want to link to the person do an API request to /{app_scoped_user_id} and use the link property on the response.

Answer 2

These are valid IDs - they're just app-scoped IDs.

As of next week, you'll be able to link to facebook.com/APP_SCOPED_USER_ID - but for now you'll have to link to facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/APP_SCOPED_USER_ID.