Retrieving Member Avatar File via API

Jason Terando_rbv7uu

Hi, I'm trying to get the image file data (not just the URL) for a member's avatar.  The URL returned the a user's avatarUrls along the lines of:

https://avatar-cdn.atlassian.com/xxxxyyyyzzz?s=24&d=https://mydomain.atlassian.net/secure/useravatar?size=small&ownerId=my.acct&avatarId=12345&noRedirect=true

The CDN returns a 302 redirect back to our Atlassian site along the lines of:

https://mydomain.atlassian.net/secure/useravatar?size=small&ownerId=my.acct&avatarId=12345&noRedirect=true

The problem I'm running into is that the call to mydomain.atlassian.net needs to be authenticated, and I don't know how to do that via the API, without using cookies, which the API documentation recommends we avoid.   So... what am I missing here?

Jason Terando_rbv7uu

Hi, here's what I got to work for our cloud account

1. Use the API call /rest/1/auth/1/session, include Atlassian API user name and API key in the basic-authentication header (BASE 64 encoded), and Jira user name and password.  Note that these are not the same thing.  My Atlassian user name is my email address, and my Jira user name is not an email address.  Moreover, I can't find where in the recent UI upgrade where you can set API keys anymore, but that is another topic...
2. On a successful call, grab all cookies from the header "set-cookie" line.  You will probably have to extract out the "name=value" portion by getting everything before the first semi-colon.  If using Node request, make sure to make the request with the option to get get the full response
3. When calling the URL to retrieve a member avatar, include the cookies extracted from step #2 (joined with a semi-colons), and make sure forwarding is turned on.  Also, in Node, I had to make sure encoding was disabled or my avatar images got messed up

 

Here is some TypeScript that demonstrates a class that handles the authentication and redirect required to get Avatar URLs...

 

import * as request from "request-promise-native";

export interface IAtlassianSiteProxy {
    retrieveImage(url: string): Promise<IAtlassianAvatar>;
}

export interface IAtlassianAvatar {
    readonly data: Buffer;
    readonly contentType: string;
}

export class AtlassianSiteProxy implements IAtlassianSiteProxy {

    private _atlassianDomain: string;
    private _userName: string;
    private _password: string;
    private _apiUserName: string;
    private _apiKey: string;
    private _cookie: string = '';

    public constructor(atlassianDomain: string, userName: string, password: string, apiUserName: string, apiKey: string) {
        this._atlassianDomain = atlassianDomain;
        this._userName = userName;
        this._password = password;
        this._apiUserName = apiUserName;
        this._apiKey = apiKey;
    }

    /**
     * Launch session to get cookie value
     */
    private async getAtlassianCookie(): Promise<string> {
        if (this._cookie) {
            return this._cookie;
        }
        var options = {
            uri: this._atlassianDomain + '/rest/auth/1/session',
            method: 'POST',
            headers: {
                "Accept": "application/json",
                "Content-type": "application/json"
            },
            auth: {
                'user': this._apiUserName,
                'pass': this._apiKey
            },
            body: {
                username: this._userName,
                password: this._password
            },
            json: true,
            resolveWithFullResponse: true,
            followRedirect: true,
            followAllRedirects: true
        };

        let response = await request(options);
        let headers = response.headers;
        /* Flatten out cookies into a single string */
        if (headers['set-cookie']) {
            this._cookie = headers['set-cookie'].map(function (cookie: string) {
                let i = cookie.indexOf(';');
                let j = cookie.indexOf('=');
                if (i > j && i > -1) {
                    let name = cookie.substr(0, j);
                    let value = cookie.substr(j + 1, i - j - 1);
                    return name + '=' + value;
                } else {
                    return '';
                }
            }).join('; ').toString();
            return this._cookie;
        }
        throw "Cookies not received from Atlassian session";
    }

    /**
     * Retrieve the image specified by the URL, handling authentication and redirects
     * @param url 
     */
    public async retrieveImage(url: string): Promise<IAtlassianAvatar> {
        let cookie = await this.getAtlassianCookie();
        let avatarOptions = {
            method: 'GET',
            uri: url,
            headers: {
                Connection: 'keep-alive',
                Cookie: cookie
            },
            auth: {
                'user': this._userName,
                'pass': this._apiKey
            },
            encoding: null,
            resolveWithFullResponse: true,
            followRedirect: true
        };

        let response = await request(avatarOptions);
        let contentType = response.headers['content-type'];
        let data = response.body;

        return {
            contentType: contentType,
            data: data
        };
    }
}