Upload a contact image via the API

Question

Can someone give me a simple example of how to upload a Contact image via the API? I am guessing it will involve a call to the File API as well but not sure.

I have the original image as a URL but want to store it in CiviCRM (not just reference the URL).

Bonus points for a nicely commented answer :)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Contact Image URL is directly stored in civicrm_contact table, so I think if you have the URL which can display an image, you should be directly able to use the contact create API as below -

$result = civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', array(
  'contact_type' => "Individual",
  'first_name' => "first",
  'last_name' => "last",
  'image_URL' => "<url>",
));

If you're on version < 5.0, the contact summary page will render the image only iff the URL is in form of http://site-name/civicrm/contact/imagefile?photo=imageName.jpg and your image file should be present in your custom file upload directory.

There is now a patch(included in version 5.0) which allows the contact summary page to display any URL image irrespective of the photo param in the URL.

If you want to download a copy of a remote image to your local file system and use that, you could do something along the lines of:

$contactId = 123;
$imageName = 'jitendra.jpg';
$path = Civi::paths()->getPath(Civi::settings()->get('customFileUploadDir')) . $imageName;
file_put_contents($path, file_get_contents('https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjnic.jpg'));
civicrm_api3('Contact', 'create', [
  'id' => $contactId,
  'image_URL' => CRM_Utils_System::url('civicrm/contact/imagefile', ['photo' => $imageName], true)
]);