Get last available URL

Question

I am using an API to get the users profile picture. The call looks something like this

https://familysearch.org/platform/tree/persons/{$rid}/portrait?access_token={$_SESSION['fs-session']}&default=https://eternalreminder.com/dev/graphics/{$default_gender}_default.svg

This link only works for about an hour because the user's session token expires then. I was wondering if there was any way to retrieve the last returned returned URL, which would be the direct link to the image, so I could store that in a database.

I have tried Google but I don't really know where to start.

Thanks in advance!

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/724391/saving-image-from-php-url — Friso Kluitenberg, Oct 05 '14 at 15:07
@FrisoKluitenberg Won't this download the image to the user's local computer? I just want to store the direct URL in a database. — blazerunner44, Oct 05 '14 at 15:11
No, file get contents retrieve the data, file_put_content stores it on the server. You can store the output of file_get_contents into a mysql field ( binary blob ) just as easily — Friso Kluitenberg, Oct 05 '14 at 15:15
@FrisoKluitenberg When I do that and echo or print it, I get a bunch of symbols. I need the direct URL. — blazerunner44, Oct 05 '14 at 15:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 05 '14 at 15:35

I was able to solve my own problem. It was doing a redirect to get the image and I just needed that URL. Here is my code that helped me get there.

$url="http://libero-news.it.feedsportal.com/c/34068/f/618095/s/2e34796f/l/0L0Sliberoquotidiano0Bit0Cnews0C12735670CI0Esaggi0Eper0Ele0Eriforme0Ecostituzionali0EChiaccherano0Ee0Eascoltano0Bhtml/story01.htm";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true); // Must be set to true so that PHP follows any "Location:" header
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$a = curl_exec($ch); // $a will contain all headers

$url = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_EFFECTIVE_URL); // This is what you need, it will return you the last effective URL

// Uncomment to see all headers
/*
echo "<pre>";
print_r($a);echo"<br>";
echo "</pre>";
*/

echo $url; // Voila

Get last available URL

1 Answers1