Facebook is doing things a little differently when it comes to coding their content for import, and it wasn't a good thing for our tool.
If you happen to not keep up on the latest trends in code (we forgive you if you don't), then you may not know that JSON is an extremely popular language right now. It is rapidly becoming the standard language when it comes to content that is designed to be shared or imported.
A few months ago, we begin struggling with our Facebook Import Tool. Our tool 'scrapes' JSON content from Facebook events, at their code level, and converts it into a format that is compatible with our Artsopolis system, saving our Network Members a lot of manual entry. What we discovered was causing the problem was odd. Some Facebook events were written in JSON, which is what they tell developers they use, but some were written in HTML, which is a less popular and slightly dated way of doing things from the development point of view. It was as if the 'house' full of Facebook event content suddenly had a 2nd level to it that we didn't know existed. Facebook certainly wasn't advertising it! So rather than rushing to patch fix each event that surprised us with HTML code, we have now altered the Facebook Import tool to 'scrape' both the JSON 'ground floor' of the house and the HTML 'second floor' as well.
