I'm trying to grab someones facebook picture from their page while just knowing their email address. I know that the service gravatar.com does this, but a lot of people don't have accounts there so I would like to grab the pictures from facebook. Is this possible? I didn't find anything about this in the developers part of facebook.
+4
A:
Programatically? You may not necessarily have the right to use others photographs. Facebook can because the users have agreed to their T&Cs and uploaded the pictures but I don't think you have any rights concerning the pictures without first contacting the owner.
Evernoob
2009-08-27 16:44:55
Hmm I was thinking of using it just like stackoverflow does it with gravatar.
Thomaschaaf
2009-08-27 16:47:04
A:
just a quick look at facebook and i've found that when you are logged in to facebook you can search for users based on email address and that will bring back the avatar. i'd be surprised if neither the api nor the FQL supports this functionality since it seems pretty basic.
+1 evernoob on the legality part. altho it is available to you when you're logged in so i can't see why they'd specifically restrict you.
good luck and let us know the results.
N
Nico
2009-08-27 17:04:19
A:
You could probably code something to screen-scrape the avatar via the search page with a valid Facebook login, but AFAIK there is no API support for this. Facebook control the emails very strictly and all API email functionality is obfuscated by emailing to a user ID or proxied email address rather than revealing the address itself.
Rob
2009-09-03 08:29:47