Is there a way to reliably retrieve the dimensions of the largest version of a facebook album photo?

Question

I'm querying an album's photos using the graph api explorer.

graph.facebook.com/[album_id]/photos

The result includes an "images" key which lists eight image versions. The largest is listed as 2048x1529, however when I open the actual image it is only 604x451, which are the dimensions listed for the next largest version.

My app needs to know accurate image dimensions ahead of time. How can I reliably find the largest available image's dimensions?

Answer 1

Given that the results returned from ALBUM_ID/photos are not reliable, I believe the following approach is the closest you can get to your intention of getting the dimensions of the largest image version:

You can retrieve the dimensions of the enlarged image you see when you click a photo in an album online. This image is referred to as src_big in the FQL photo table. You retrieve the dimensions with this FQL query:

SELECT src_big_width, src_big_height
FROM photo
WHERE object_id=OBJECT_ID

where OBJECT_ID is the photo's Facebook object id number.

The call looks like this,

https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=SELECT src_big_width,src_big_height FROM photo WHERE object_id=OBJECT_ID

You need

friends_photos
user_photos

permissions and an access token.

To get the url to the src_big image, add src_big to the query:

SELECT src_big, src_big_width, src_big_height
FROM photo
WHERE object_id=OBJECT_ID

The src_big image has a maximum width or height of 720 pixels if the image was uploaded before March 1, 2012. If it was uploaded after that date, the maximum is 960 pixels.