Twitter update_profile_image in C#

Question

I am having trouble implementing Twitter's [update profile image] method. Does anyone have any sample code for passing an image as raw multiart data to the Twitter API?

I am using .NET.

Answer 1

Have you looked at the following Twitter API Libararies for .NET?

• Twitterizer
• Yedda Twitter C# Library
• Twitteroo
• TweetSharp

Answer 2

A good library for interfacing Twitter in C# is tweet#. This would make this much simpler than doing this directly.

Answer 3

Taken from the LINQ2Twitter project and modified slightly for brevity..

    public static String UpdateAvatar(String filePath)
    {
        String avatarUrl= "http://twitter.com/account/update_profile_image.xml";
        String file = Path.GetFileName(filePath);

        string imageType;

        switch (Path.GetExtension(file).ToLower())
        {
            case ".jpg":
            case ".jpeg":
                imageType = "jpg";
                break;
            case ".gif":
                imageType = "gif";
                break;
            case ".png":
                imageType = "png";
                break;
            default:
                throw new ArgumentException(
                    "Can't recognize the extension of the file you're uploading. Please choose either a *.gif, *.jpg, *.jpeg, or *.png file.", filePath);
        }

        string contentBoundaryBase = DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString("x");
        string beginContentBoundary = string.Format("--{0}\r\n", contentBoundaryBase);
        var contentDisposition = string.Format("Content-Disposition:form-data); name=\"image\"); filename=\"{0}\"\r\nContent-Type: image/{1}\r\n\r\n", file, imageType);
        var endContentBoundary = string.Format("\r\n--{0}--\r\n", contentBoundaryBase);

        var formDataSB = new StringBuilder();

        byte[] fileBytes = null;
        string fileByteString = null;
        Encoding encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1");

        using (var fileStream = new FileStream(filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
        {
            byte[] buffer = new byte[4096];
            var memStr = new MemoryStream();
            memStr.Position = 0;
            int bytesRead = 0;

            while ((bytesRead = fileStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) != 0)
            {
                memStr.Write(buffer, 0, bytesRead);
            }

            memStr.Position = 0;
            fileByteString = encoding.GetString(memStr.GetBuffer());
        }

        fileBytes =
            encoding.GetBytes(
                formDataSB.ToString() +
                beginContentBoundary +
                contentDisposition +
                fileByteString +
                endContentBoundary);

        var req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(AvatarUpdateURL);
        req.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue = false;
        req.ContentType = "multipart/form-data;boundary=" + contentBoundaryBase;
        req.PreAuthenticate = true;
        req.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true;
        req.Method = "POST";
        req.ContentLength = fileBytes.Length;
        req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(Username, Password);

        string responseXml = null;

        using (var reqStream = req.GetRequestStream())
        {
            reqStream.Write(fileBytes, 0, fileBytes.Length);
            reqStream.Flush();
        }

        string httpStatus = string.Empty;
        WebResponse resp = null;

        try
        {
            resp = req.GetResponse();

            httpStatus = resp.Headers["Status"];

            using (var respStream = resp.GetResponseStream())
            using (var respRdr = new StreamReader(respStream))
            {
                responseXml = respRdr.ReadToEnd();
            }
        }
        catch (WebException wex)
        {
            //do something
        }
        finally
        {
            if (resp != null)
            {
                resp.Close();
            }
        }
        return responseXml.ToString();

    }