CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-apigoogle-contacts-apigoogle-photos-apigoogle-people-api
Stalinko
Stalinko

Reputation: 3646

Google People API / Other Contacts - how to get photos of other contacts?

Google forces us to migrate from the deprecated Contacts API over new People API.

They even implemented "Other Contacts" feature in the People API which was so demanded.

But now I'm facing another problem - there is no way to get photos of Other Contacts in the People API.

I was digging into this problem and figured out that it's possible to add photos into the readMask (even though it's not documented):

https://people.googleapis.com/v1/otherContacts?access_token=<...>&readMask=emailAddresses,names,photos

...but it doesn't help, because it returns the default picture with the first letter for all contacts, even for contacts who has a real photo. Like this one: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/cm/ABXenNkcRSTRZU8PEFQfJtaeEBZnxLgN-UO555npUt1idzcMohoSGuJFfKx0JX2AR6Qp=s100

I tried to add coverPhotos into the readMask but it doesn't let it there.

Then I was checking how old Contacts API formats photo urls and figured out the format:

https://www.google.com/m8/feeds/photos/media/<user-email-address>/<contact-id>

But it has 2 disadvantages:

So here is my question:

Is there any simpler and cleaner way to get real photos of Other Contacts in People API?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2208

Answers (2)

Stalinko
Stalinko

Reputation: 3646

This bug has been solved and now we have a solution!

Updated documentation: https://developers.google.com/people/api/rest/v1/otherContacts/list

There is a new sources[] request parameter. To get the real photos of "other contacts" you need to specify 2 values: READ_SOURCE_TYPE_CONTACT and READ_SOURCE_TYPE_PROFILE.

The request would look like this:

GET https://people.googleapis.com/v1/otherContacts?readMask=photos&key=API_KEY&sources=READ_SOURCE_TYPE_CONTACT&sources=READ_SOURCE_TYPE_PROFILE

Now some contacts will contain 2 entries in the photos array:

photos: [
  {
    metadata: {
      primary: true,
      source: {
        type: "PROFILE",
        id: "11111"
      }
    },
    url: "<THIS IS THE REAL PROFILE PICTURE>"
  },
  {
    metadata: {
      source: {
        type: "OTHER_CONTACT",
        id: "6666666"
      }
    },
    url: "<THIS IS THE DEFAULT PHOTO STUB>",
    default: true
  }
]

Upvotes: 3

ale13
ale13

Reputation: 6062

The readMask fields accepted for the otherContacts.list method are the following:

  • emailAddresses
  • metadata
  • names
  • phoneNumbers
  • photos

As you can notice, the photos field is an accepted one while making the above request.

However, the returned response should yield a url which redirects you to the user's profile picture. Because of this, I have taken the opportunity to report it on Google's Issue Tracker here. I suggest you star the issue as any updates regarding this will be posted there.

Reference

Upvotes: 0

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