API for retrieving photos

General Q&A
1

There appears to be no binary data passed through the Oplog when I perform an Oplog API call.

How do I retrieve photos from a web script? What is the base API URL for this? Which app Id and token do I use, the one for the specific app/environment combination?

Documentation on this is not clear.

2

Hi George

There is no API for solely retrieving photos or other attachments (documents, signatures, etc.).
The standard Backend API does expose an undocumented Attachments API which can be used to retrieve the raw attachment data instead of a URL.
It uses the same auth as the standard backend API, and the URL takes the following form
https://{backend_base_url}/api/v4/{account_id}/attachments/{attachment_id}

That said, this data can also be retrieved as part of the standard API response for the objects they are attached to.

You can therefore use any of the backend APIs that allow you to retrieve objects, namely:

  1. Retrieving a single object (docs)
  2. Retrieving all objects (docs)
  3. Querying objects (docs)

If any attachments are present in any of the objects returned then it will be part of that object’s payload, and will be presented as link/url (or set of links for photos captured in the app) that can be accessed to download the attachment in question.

Attachment API Response example

{
    "id": "eacb4836-f1b9-11e1-9750-001cc01904e3",
    "state": "uploaded",
    "thumbnail": "https://run.journeyapps.com/media/AwNDkyOSJdLFsicCIsI?sha1=12345",
    "fullscreen": "https://run.journeyapps.com/media/3JlZW4iXV0W1siZiIs?sha1=12345",
    "original": "https://run.journeyapps.com/media/SJdLFsicCIsW1siZiIs?sha1=12345"
}

As to your question about which app / environment combination, that will be for the DB / Backend in question. That is to say, in order to use of the standard Backend APIs to retrieve an object(s) you would use the normal Backend API and associated authentication method. Once you have the links/URLs, they can be accessed without authentication.

I hope this makes sense

3

T
Now I’m thinking about using this URL path to get my image(s).
I don’t actually store them in MSSQL, just the file path.
So for my main photo and my additional images I’m just uploading the file name and some process on my server can go to your media directory and D/L the image to my C drive.

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