How to determine why a facebook page URL will not return a facebook id?

Question

For the most part, using the graph api, passing in a Facebook page's encoded URL returns the normal facebook id.

For instance, using the Graph API Explorer and passing in https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fkendalljenner returns

{
"name": "Kendall Jenner",
"id": "173567062703796"
}

However, for some (pretty rare) FB pages, like http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmargotrobbie, I get

{ "id": "http://www.facebook.com/margotrobbie" }

The question, Why do some Facebook urls not return their Facebook page id through graph api?, suggests that the issue may be that the page is restricted somehow (like for alcohol content). I believe this may be the case, because the Harley Quinn videos in the posts are a bit graphic, but I searched all the info for the page and it doesn't say anything about the content being restricted. In addition, I am using a User access token that is allowed to see the page via normal FB web interface without any apparent restriction.

BTW, for anyone who hasn't seen this before, the id set to the url seems to be the result when facebook doesn't know anything about the URL. Obviously this shouldn't be the case for facebook's own URL.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65947526/how-to-determine-why-a-facebook-page-url-will-not-return-a-facebook-id

Answer 1

Not sure what the reason for the apparent difference with the two page URLs indicated, but I did solve the underlying problem of getting the facebook id of the page!

First of all, I had tried the process described here: How to get page id of facebook page, however it wasn't working for me. In my effort to permute all options, I had changed the access token to a "user access token". Turns out, you HAVE to have an "application access token" as is well-documented in said article.

Thanks to CBroe for making me question how I was calling the API...no matter how long I was calling it this way.