Facebook Graph API - Post a remote image to an album - facebook-graph-api

Question

At the moment I have to download images on the server and post them like this:
$photo = array(
'message' => 'Status',
'source' => '#/full/path/of/the/image.png'
);
$response = $fb->api('/'.$album.'/photos', 'POST', $photo);
I'm using curl on the backend to post this request and it's working like a charm.
I'm wondering if it's possible to post the remote image directly instead to download a local copy?
I tried to do something like this:
$photo = array(
'message' => 'Status',
'source' => file_get_contents('http://www.domain.com/image.png')
);
$response = $fb->api('/'.$album.'/photos', 'POST', $photo);
But I got an exception from the graph API: "(#324) Requires upload file"
It looks like this is happening when you are not sending the multipart/data header which is set automatically when sending an array of data ($data is an array).
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
So I'm doubtful that it's possible to post a remote image.
What do you think?

Answer 1

It is possible to upload a photo by just giving that photo’s URL under the parameter name url.
This info is a little hidden in the description of the photo endpoint, where it just says,
“You can also publish a photo by providing a url param with the photo's URL.”
So instead of providing the sourceparameter, just provide url with the value of the photo’s publicly reachable URL. (All other parameters except source stay the same and are still usable in the same way.)
I tried this recently, and it worked fine. Although, I only tried it for photos with URLs from my app domain – I can’t say for sure if it works for URLs from “anywhere” on the web as well (although i can’t see a good reason for why it shouldn’t).