Facebook – Getting the “real” Facebook profile picture URL from graph API

facebookimageprofile

Facebook graph API tells me I can get a profile picture of a user using

http://graph.facebook.com/517267866/picture?type=large

which works fine. However, when you type above URL into a browser, the actual address of the image is

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/profile-ak-snc1/v227/560/83/n517267866_1928.jpg

How can I get the second URL using the first one programmatically?

Best Answer

The first URL gives a HTTP 302 (temporary redirect) to the second. So, to find the second URL programatically, you could issue a HTTP request for the first URL and get the Location header of the response.

That said, don't rely on the second URL being pemanent. Reading a little in to the HTTP response code (of 302 as opposed to a permanent 301), it is possible Facebook changes those URLs on a regular basis to prevent people from—for example—using their servers to host images.

Edit: Notice that the CDN URL the OP posted is now a 404, so we know that we cannot rely on the URL being long-lived. Also, if you're linking to the Graph API from an <img> on a SSL-secured page, ~~there's a parameter you have to add~~ make sure you use https://graph.facebook.com.

Update: The API has added a parameter – redirect=false – which causes JSON to be returned rather than a redirect. The retruned JSON includes the CDN URL:

{
   "data": {
      "url": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/...",
      "is_silhouette": false
   }
}

Again, I wouldn't rely on this CDN URL being long-lived. The JSON response is sent with permissive CORS headers, so you're free to do this client-side with XHR requests.

Related Solutions

Php – Facebook API – How to get a Facebook user’s profile image through the Facebook API (without requiring the user to “Allow” the application)

Simply fetch the data through this URL:

http://graph.facebook.com/userid_here/picture

Replace userid_here with id of the user you want to get the photo of. You can also use HTTPS as well.

You can use the PHP's file_get_contents function to read that URL and process the retrieved data.

Resource:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api

Note: In php.ini, you need to make sure that the OpenSSL extension is enabled to use thefile_get_contents function of PHP to read that URL.

Php – Get Facebook real profile image URL

kire is right, but a better solution for your use case would be the following:

    // get the headers from the source without downloading anything
    // there will be a location header wich redirects to the actual url
    // you may want to put some error handling here in case the connection cant be established etc...
    // the second parameter gives us an assoziative array and not jut a sequential list so we can right away extract the location header
    $headers = get_headers('https://graph.facebook.com/1489686594/picture',1);
    // just a precaution, check whether the header isset...
    if(isset($headers['Location'])) {
        $url = $headers['Location']; // string
    } else {
        $url = false; // nothing there? .. weird, but okay!
    }
    // $url contains now the url of the profile picture, but be careful it might very well be only temporary! there's a reason why facebok does it this way ;)
    // the code is untested!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Php – Facebook API – How to get a Facebook user’s profile image through the Facebook API (without requiring the user to “Allow” the application)

Php – Get Facebook real profile image URL

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