Getting the URL of Google Place Photo from a GoogleMapsClient response

Question

I'm building an API endpoint which will return details and a single photo of a Google place using express.js and Node.js client library for Google Maps API Web Services. The endpoint below returns details of a place and I'm having trouble retrieving the URL of a photo. Below is the code in question.

There are two requests to the google maps client:

1. Get place details based on req.params.id and the details contain a photos array

2. Get photo using the photo_reference from above

   var googleMapsClient = require('@google/maps').createClient({
     key: 'mykeyhere',
     Promise: Promise
   });
   
   exports.getGglPlace = function(req, res) {
   
   googleMapsClient.place({
        placeid: req.params.id
   }).asPromise()
   .then((response) => {
     var venue = response.json.result
   
     if (venue.photos[0]) {
       googleMapsClient.placesPhoto({
         photoreference: venue.photos[0].photo_reference,
         maxwidth: 200
       }).asPromise()
       .then((photo) => {
   
         console.log("Photo:", photo); // this returns a massive chunk of data which I think contains the actual image object also
         venue.photoURL = photo.url; // this doesn't work
   
         res.send(venue);
       })
       .catch((err)=>{
         console.log("Error Getting Photo!", err);
         res.send(venue);
       })
     } else {
       res.send(venue);
     }
   })
   .catch((err) => {
     res.send(404);
   })
   }
   

Any idea how to obtain the URL from the response which is called photo in the code above?

If I try going to the API directly through the browser or Postman, the URL gets redirected to the actual source URL of the image, which is what I want to add to my venue object.

API request example: https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/photo?maxwidth=400&photoreference=CmRaAAAA8NPP1nJJ7RCzcQDGUrpBHJXlzlQkN74dcyQJ2ytVpeYIu47sR-8dfCjke1J5exP-HpkayaXOc26ShsVKkXOaJZBOdpmExUfCzUTIBN3x0uPfR5Nt3PnN-a3GoRVZ7YxKEhBvqXF356Tn9mBJ7lA_JQ_7GhQMKvZkOk-Rs9knsansx5yuhfIvsQ&sensor=false&key=mykeyhere

Redirects to (this is what I want photo.url to return): https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipPVD12HA5FBnjmiqVLphYgjfPtIPydn4Ie-xGKr=s1600-w200

Any help is appreciated.

P.S. My first post here - sorry if I'm not clear enough with my question.

Answer 1

Here is how I solved it. It doesn't seem perfect, but it does the job.

The response contains a req section which has keys in there that I was able to use to build the URL. Specifically, the response.req.socket._host key and the response.req.path key.

Here is what it looks like in my code (where photo is the response from google API)

venue.photoURL = "https://" + photo.req.socket._host + photo.req.path;

photo.req.socket._host gives me lh3.googleusercontent.com

photo.req.path gives me /p/AF1QipPVD12HA5FBnjmiqVLphYgjfPtIPydn4Ie-xGKr=s1600-w200

Results of the constructed URL to the photo is: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipPVD12HA5FBnjmiqVLphYgjfPtIPydn4Ie-xGKr=s1600-w200