Fetching User Profile Photos

Question

I'd like to use the Microsoft Graph REST API to retrieve the profile photo URL of a user.

Is there an available endpoint to do this? According to docs (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/profilephoto-get?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http), /photo/$value returns binary data while /photo returns metadata.

Answer 1

you can use the graphapi explorer to demo the api call. under get started, try the my photo:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer

you need a valid Entra id account to run the tool. your actual application will need a token. see:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/auth/auth-concepts

Answer 2

Hello Accounts,

I understand you're trying to retrieve the profile photo of users using the Microsoft Graph REST API. While the API provides the /photo/$value endpoint to get the binary data of a user's profile photo, it doesn’t directly provide a URL to access the image.

If you're looking to display the image on a webpage or allow users to access it via a URL, you would need to store the image somewhere accessible, like Azure Blob Storage, and then provide a URL for access.

You can retrieve the binary data, upload the photo to Azure Blob Storage, and generate a URL to access the image.

Make sure your application has ProfilePhoto.Read.All permission in Microsoft Graph to access the profile photo of a user.

Create one container named profile-photos in your Azure storage account with Blob access level:

Here’s the Python script that does this:

import requests
from azure.identity import ClientSecretCredential
from azure.storage.blob import BlobServiceClient, ContentSettings

tenant_id = 'your-tenant-id'
client_id = 'your-client-id'
client_secret = 'your-client-secret'

storage_account_name = 'your-storage-account'
container_name = 'profile-photos'
blob_name = 'user-photo.jpg'
storage_account_key = 'your-storage-account-key'

def get_access_token(tenant_id, client_id, client_secret):
    credential = ClientSecretCredential(tenant_id, client_id, client_secret)
    token = credential.get_token("https://graph.microsoft.com/.default")
    return token.token

def fetch_profile_photo(access_token, user_id):
    url = f'https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/{user_id}/photo/$value'
    headers = {'Authorization': f'Bearer {access_token}'}
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    
    if response.status_code == 200:
        return response.content
    else:
        print(f"Error fetching photo: {response.status_code}")
        return None

def upload_photo_to_blob(photo_data, storage_account_name, container_name, blob_name, storage_account_key):
    blob_service_client = BlobServiceClient(account_url=f"https://{storage_account_name}.blob.core.windows.net", credential=storage_account_key)
    blob_client = blob_service_client.get_blob_client(container_name, blob_name)
    
    content_settings = ContentSettings(content_type='image/jpeg')
    
    try:
        blob_client.upload_blob(photo_data, overwrite=True, content_settings=content_settings)
        print(f"Photo uploaded successfully: https://{storage_account_name}.blob.core.windows.net/{container_name}/{blob_name}")
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error uploading photo: {e}")

def main():
    access_token = get_access_token(tenant_id, client_id, client_secret)
    
    if access_token:
        user_id = 'your-user-id'  
        photo_data = fetch_profile_photo(access_token, user_id)
        
        if photo_data:
            upload_photo_to_blob(photo_data, storage_account_name, container_name, blob_name, storage_account_key)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Once the photo is uploaded to Azure Blob Storage, you’ll have a URL like this:

https://{your-storage-account}.blob.core.windows.net/{container-name}/{blob-name}

When I opened this URL in the browser, I successfully retrieved the user’s profile photo.

Alternatively, you can also run this API call in Graph Explorer by signing in with valid user account consenting ProfilePhoto.Read.All permission:

GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/userId/photo/$value

Let me know if you have any further queries. Happy to assist!

Hope this helps!

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