Retrieving Medium or Large Profile Image from Twitter with omniauth-twitter

Question

I'm using omniauth-twitter gem to authenticate users through twitter. I am also using their Twitter profile image as their avatar for my site. However, the image I get from Twitter is low resolution. I know Twitter has better resolution pics available. How do I get it?

Here is what I am currently doing. It is a method in the user model. It works, just doesn't get me a good quality pic:

user.rb

  def update_picture(omniauth)
    self.picture   = omniauth['info']['image'] 
  end

I thought maybe I could pass a size option onto it somehow, but can not seem to find a good solution.

Answer 1

I'm using the omniauth-twitter gem as well. In the apply_omniauth method of my User model, I save the Twitter image path like this, stripping the _normal suffix:

if omniauth['provider'] == 'twitter'
    self.image = omniauth['info']['image'].sub("_normal", "")
end

Then I have a helper method called portrait that accepts a size argument. As Terence Eden suggests, you can just replace the _size suffix of the filename to access the different image sizes that Twitter provides:

def portrait(size)

    # Twitter
    # mini (24x24)                                                                  
    # normal (48x48)                                            
    # bigger (73x73)                                                
    # original (variable width x variable height)

    if self.image.include? "twimg"

        # determine filetype        
        case 
        when self.image.downcase.include?(".jpeg")
            filetype = ".jpeg"
        when self.image.downcase.include?(".jpg")
            filetype = ".jpg"
        when self.image.downcase.include?(".gif")
            filetype = ".gif"
        when self.image.downcase.include?(".png")
            filetype = ".png"
        else
            raise "Unable to read filetype of Twitter image for User ##{self.id}"
        end

        # return requested size
        if size == "original"
            return self.image
        else
            return self.image.gsub(filetype, "_#{size}#{filetype}")
        end

    end

end

Answer 2

Once you have the URL of the image, it's quite simple. You need to remove the "_normal" from the end of the URL.

Here's my avatar image

https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2318692719/7182974111_ec8e1fb46f_s_normal.jpg

Here's the larger version

https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2318692719/7182974111_ec8e1fb46f_s.jpg

A simple regex should suffice.

Remember, the size of the image is unpredictable - so you may wish to resize it before displaying it on your site.

Answer 3

A better way to do this is through the config options of the omniauth-twitter gem.

provider :twitter, "API_KEY", "API_SECRET", :image_size => 'original'

https://github.com/arunagw/omniauth-twitter