Create a Picasa album and upload images to it with PHP and cURL

Question

All of the tutorials I\'ve found for creating Picasa albums and uploading pictures use the Zend Framework which I haven\'t studied.

Is it possible to upload images a

Answer 1

Expanding Mark's answer, you can send the XML directly from curl using CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS. However, instead of making an associative array, try passing the actual XML string like so:

$data= "<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
    xmlns:media='http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/'
    xmlns:gphoto='http://schemas.google.com/photos/2007'>
  <title type='text'>Trip To Italy</title>
  <summary type='text'>This was the recent trip I took to Italy.</summary>
  <gphoto:location>Italy</gphoto:location>
  <gphoto:access>public</gphoto:access>
  <gphoto:timestamp>1152255600000</gphoto:timestamp>
  <media:group>
    <media:keywords>italy, vacation</media:keywords>
  </media:group>
  <category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind'
    term='http://schemas.google.com/photos/2007#album'></category>
</entry>";
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);  
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);  

$hasil = curl_exec($ch);  

Answer 2

Here's some code for creating the album. We'll pick up with the cURL call to authenticate.

//This is the cURL call to authenticate. We'll splitting out the return values 
//to more easily get the auth code.
$ret = explode("\n",curl_exec($ch));  

//Save all of the return values to an array so we can get them more easily later
$gvals = array();
foreach($ret as $item) {
    $flds = explode("=", $item);

    if(count($flds) > 1) {
        $gvals[$flds[0]] = $flds[1]; 
    }
}

//This is the authentication header we'll need to pass with each successive call
$authHeader = 'Authorization:  GoogleLogin auth="' . $gvals['Auth'] . '"';
$userId = "THE PICASA USER ID GOES HERE";
$feedUrl = "https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/$userId";

//This is the XML for creating a new album.
$rawXml = "<entry xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
                xmlns:media='http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/'
                xmlns:gphoto='http://schemas.google.com/photos/2007'>
              <title type='text'>Test album from PHP</title>
              <summary type='text'>This is a test album</summary>
              <gphoto:location>Louisville</gphoto:location>
              <gphoto:access>public</gphoto:access>
              <gphoto:timestamp>1152255600000</gphoto:timestamp>
              <category scheme='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind'
                term='http://schemas.google.com/photos/2007#album'></category>
            </entry>";

//Setup our cURL options
//Notice the last one where we pass in the authentication header
$options = array(
            CURLOPT_URL=> $feedUrl,
            CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER=> false,
            CURLOPT_POST=> true,
            CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=> true,
            CURLOPT_HEADER=> true,
            CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION=> true,
            CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS=> $rawXml,
            CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER=> array('GData-Version:  2', $authHeader, 'Content-Type:  application/atom+xml')
        );
curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);

//This call will create the Picasa album.
//The return value is XML with a bunch of information about the newly created album.
$ret = curl_exec($ch);

---

Uploading a photo works in a similar fashion:

http://code.google.com/apis/picasaweb/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol.html#PostPhotos

Here's functioning code for uploading an image without metadata:

$userId = "USER ID GOES HERE";
$albumId = "ALBUM ID GOES HERE";
$albumUrl = "https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/$userId/albumid/$albumId";
$imgName = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/picasa/cute_baby_kitten.jpg';

//Get the binary image data
$fileSize = filesize($imgName);
$fh = fopen($imgName, 'rb');
$imgData = fread($fh, $fileSize);
fclose($fh);

$header = array('GData-Version:  2', $authHeader, 'Content-Type: image/jpeg', 'Content-Length: ' . $fileSize, 'Slug: cute_baby_kitten.jpg');
$data = $imgData; //Make sure the image data is NOT Base64 encoded otherwise the upload will fail with a "Not an image" error

$ret = "";
$ch  = curl_init($albumUrl);
$options = array(
        CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER=> false,
        CURLOPT_POST=> true,
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=> true,
        CURLOPT_HEADER=> true,
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION=> true,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS=> $data,
        CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER=> $header
    );
curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
$ret = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

---

And here's an example of uploading a photo with metadata (finally!):

$albumUrl = "https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/$userId/albumid/$albumId";
$imgName = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/picasa/cute_baby_kitten.jpg';

$rawImgXml = '<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
              <title>plz-to-love-realcat.jpg</title>
              <summary>Real cat wants attention too.</summary>
              <category scheme="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#kind"
                term="http://schemas.google.com/photos/2007#photo"/>
            </entry>';

$fileSize = filesize($imgName);
$fh = fopen($imgName, 'rb');
$imgData = fread($fh, $fileSize);
fclose($fh);

$dataLength = strlen($rawImgXml) + $fileSize;
$data = "";
$data .= "\nMedia multipart posting\n";
$data .= "--P4CpLdIHZpYqNn7\n";
$data .= "Content-Type: application/atom+xml\n\n";
$data .= $rawImgXml . "\n";
$data .= "--P4CpLdIHZpYqNn7\n";
$data .= "Content-Type: image/jpeg\n\n";
$data .= $imgData . "\n";
$data .= "--P4CpLdIHZpYqNn7--";

$header = array('GData-Version:  2', $authHeader, 'Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary=P4CpLdIHZpYqNn7;', 'Content-Length: ' . strlen($data), 'MIME-version: 1.0');

$ret = "";
$ch  = curl_init($albumUrl);
$options = array(
        CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER=> false,
        CURLOPT_POST=> true,
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=> true,
        CURLOPT_HEADER=> true,
        CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION=> true,
        CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS=> $data,
        CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER=> $header
    );
curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);
$ret = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);