Save facebook profile image using cURL - php

Question

I'm trying to save a users profile image on facebook using CURL. When I use the code below, I save a jpeg image but it has zero bytes in it. But if I exchange the url value to https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/211398_812269356_2295463_n.jpg, which is where http://graph.facebook.com/' . $user_id . '/picture?type=large redirects the browser, the image is saved without a problem. What am I doing wrong here?
<?php
$url = 'http://graph.facebook.com/' . $user_id . '/picture?type=large';
$file_handler = fopen('pic_facebook.jpg', 'w');
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FILE, $file_handler);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
fclose($file_handler);
?>

Answer 1

There is a redirect, so you have to add this option for curl
// safemode if off:
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
but if you have safemode if on, then:
// safemode if on:
<?php
function curl_redir_exec($ch)
{
static $curl_loops = 0;
static $curl_max_loops = 20;
if ($curl_loops++ >= $curl_max_loops)
{
$curl_loops = 0;
return FALSE;
}
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
#list($header, $data) = #explode("\n\n", $data, 2);
$http_code = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
if ($http_code == 301 || $http_code == 302)
{
$matches = array();
preg_match('/Location:(.*?)\n/', $header, $matches);
$url = #parse_url(trim(array_pop($matches)));
if (!$url)
{
//couldn't process the url to redirect to
$curl_loops = 0;
return $data;
}
$last_url = parse_url(curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL));
if (!$url['scheme'])
$url['scheme'] = $last_url['scheme'];
if (!$url['host'])
$url['host'] = $last_url['host'];
if (!$url['path'])
$url['path'] = $last_url['path'];
$new_url = $url['scheme'] . '://' . $url['host'] . $url['path'] . (#$url['query']?'?'.$url['query']:'');
return $new_url;
} else {
$curl_loops=0;
return $data;
}
}
function get_right_url($url) {
$curl = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
return curl_redir_exec($curl);
}
$url = 'http://graph.facebook.com/' . $user_id . '/picture?type=large';
$file_handler = fopen('pic_facebook.jpg', 'w');
$curl = curl_init(get_right_url($url));
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FILE, $file_handler);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
fclose($file_handler);

Answer 2

If you can't process the redirect, try this instead:
Make the request to https://graph.facebook.com/<USER ID>?fields=picture and parse the response, which will be in JSON format and look like this - e.g. for Zuck you get this response:
{
"picture": "http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/157340_4_3955636_q.jpg"
}
Then make your curl request directly to retrieve the image from that cloud storage URL

Answer 3

set
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION to true
so that it follows the 301/302 redirect the reads the image file from final location.
i.e.
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);

Answer 4

I managed to do it this way, works perfectly fine:
$data = file_get_contents('https://graph.facebook.com/[App-Scoped-ID]/picture?width=378&height=378&access_token=[Access-Token]');
$file = fopen('fbphoto.jpg', 'w+');
fputs($file, $data);
fclose($file);
You just need an App Access Token (APPID . '|' . APPSECRET), and you can specify width and height.
You can also add "redirect=false" to the URL, to get a JSON object with the URL (For example: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-xpa1...)
CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION has been removed in PHP5.4, so it´s not really an option anymore.