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Alan Beats
Alan Beats

Reputation: 289

Testing if user has posted a facebook profile picture and if so, retrieving it?

What is the correct way of verifying that a user has put in a facebook profile picture (ie the non-default one), and if so, to retrieve it?

This: How to determine if a Facebook user has uploaded a profile picture or its default? talks about a method, but the author himself says that its a bad method:

public static function hasProfilePicture($fbuid) 
{
    /* Really stupid method to test if Facebook user has real profile picture
    * based on FB returning a gif when you request a large photo.  
    * Use with care - for every profile there's an outgoing request! */ 
    $r = get_headers("http://graph.facebook.com/$fbuid/picture?type=square"); 
    return !array_search("Content-Type: image/gif",$r);
}

Upvotes: 1

Views: 953

Answers (1)

Gaurav Gupta
Gaurav Gupta

Reputation: 5416

If a user HAS a profile photo, it can be accessed via http://graph.facebook.com/<facebook username>/picture. For example, http://graph.facebook.com/gauravgupta.in/picture redirects to a specific URL and shows my Facebook profile picture.

However, if a user does NOT have a profile picture, the above URL gets redirected to the URL of the standard placeholder image, which is currently http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/static-ak/rsrc.php/v1/yo/r/UlIqmHJn-SK.gif

It's definitely not a reliable way, but will work till Facebook decides to change it.

Upvotes: 1

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