Facebook Cookbook

Displaying a User’s Name

Problem

How do I display a user’s name?

Solution

Use the <fb:name> tag. Among the many options you can include, specify the uid of the user whose name you want to display (you can also use loggedinuser or profileowner).

Discussion

This tag is interesting because of the various ways that different languages deal with possessive nouns and other grammatical structures, which I can never keep straight. (Is the participle dangling? What does that even mean?) This is a great example of FBML saving you from having to add giant if/else blocks to your code. The parameters are listed in Table 6-1.

Table 6-1. Parameters for fb:name

Name	Type	Default value	Description	They see	I see
uid	uid	N/A	The Facebook user ID (uid) of the user or Page whose name you want to show. You can also use loggedinuser or profileowner. This is the only required field.	“Jay Goldman”	“You”
capitalize	bool	false	Capitalize the text if useyou is true and loggedinuser is the uid.	“Jay Goldman”	“You”
firstnameonly	bool	false	Show only the user’s first name.	“Jay”	“You”
ifcantsee	string	Empty	Alternate text to display if the logged-in user cannot access the user specified.	Specified text if they can’t see me; “Jay Goldman” if they can	“You”
lastnameonly	bool	false	Show only the user’s last name.	“Goldman”	“You”
linked	bool	true	Link to the user’s Profile.	“Jay Goldman”	“You”
possessive	bool	false	Use the possessive form (his/her/your).	“Jay Goldman’s”	“Your”
reflexive	bool	false	Use the reflexive form (himself/herself/yourself). ...