Pull twitter profile image

Question

Is there a quick way to pull twitter profile image in PHP or Javascript? I need to get the url of the FULL image (not avatar size). Thanks. Any code sample is good.

Answer 1

Twitter has had a nice simple URL.

https://api.twitter.com/1/users/profile_image/abraham

It has size options like "?size=bigger"

You can read more about it on Little known Twitter and TwitterAPI tips and tricks.

Twitter now has documentation up as GET users/profile_image/:screen_name.

Update: Support for this method has been removed from v1.1 of the API. Recommended practice going forward is GET /users/show and cache profile_image_url locally in your service/app.

Answer 2

function get_big_profile_image($username, $size = '') {
  $api_call = 'http://twitter.com/users/show/'.$username.'.json';
  $results = json_decode(file_get_contents($api_call));
  return str_replace('_normal', $size, $results->profile_image_url);
}

get_big_profile_image('bobsaget', '_bigger') should return a large avatar: http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/330305510/n229938150541_9850_bigger.jpg

get_big_profile_image('bobsaget') should return an even larger image: http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/330305510/n229938150541_9850.jpg