How do I get a specific users buddyicon using the Flickr API with JSON?

Question

I've read up on their buddyicon system for profile pictures that Flickr uses, and it's API. However they're not very clear about what API method returns it. See: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.buddyicons.html

It's extremely vague of documentation.

I've been using methods like the below as a base for utilizing Flickr data in my app.

$.getJSON('https://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=youdontneedthis&user_id=youdontneedthiseither&format=json&nojsoncallback=1', function(data) {
$.each(data.photos.photo, function(i,item){
    var src = "http://farm"+ item.farm +".static.flickr.com/"+ item.server +"/"+ item.id +"_"+ item.secret +"_m.jpg";

This is working well for me, but I'm not aware of a method to return the buddyicon??

http://farm{icon-farm}.staticflickr.com/{icon-server}/buddyicons/{nsid}.jpg

How does one determine this without a valid API method?

Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You can get information about a user by user_id and then extract necessary data for work:

// I use BabelJS / ES2015
const url = 'https://api.flickr.com/services/rest';
const api_key = /* enter api key */;
const user_id = /* enter user id */;

$.getJSON(url, {
    method: 'flickr.people.getInfo',
    api_key: api_key,
    user_id: user_id,
    format: 'json',
    nojsoncallback: '1',
}, function(data) {
    const {
        iconfarm,
        iconserver,
        nsid
    } = data.person;
    const src = `https://farm${iconfarm}.staticflickr.com/${iconserver}/buddyicons/${nsid}.jpg`;
});