Photo Changes

Eric Eskildsen
Eric Eskildsen
Sixth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
in Education Management APIs

Hi all,

Does anyone know of a way to tell which users' photos have changed? I saw this suggestion on the ideas site:

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-3177 .

Today, the API schema for profile photos is:

"profile_photo": {
"photo_url": "<url>",
"thumbnail_url": "<url>"
},

Since the only information we have about them is URLs, we have to download all of them to check for changes. They can then be compared to the hashes of previously downloaded photos to see if there's been a change.

It would save time if we could look at a hash/timestamp from the API, plus reduce the load on Blackbaud's servers.

Best Answer

  • Brian Gray
    Brian Gray Community All-Star
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge
    Answer ✓

    When a new image file is uploaded for a user, the last few characters of the file name change. For example, before a new image is uploaded, the URL might be

    //bbk12e1-cdn.myschoolcdn.com/ftpimages/xxx/user/thumb_user66xxxx_4690910_510.png"

    After the image is updated, the URL might be

    //bbk12e1-cdn.myschoolcdn.com/ftpimages/xxx/user/thumb_user66xxxx_4690910_944.png"

    I store the URLs in an external database (used for another purpose). I have a program that runs daily looking for changes between the SIS and the external database. If the URLs don't match, I know that there was a new image uploaded so I update the URL in the external database.

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