How to get contact's photo from exchange server

Question

Based on this tutorial, I'm trying to get contacts photos

private String createPhoto() {
    try {
        AttachmentCollection attachments = contact.getAttachments();
        for (Attachment attachment : attachments.getItems()) {
            if (attachment instanceof FileAttachment) {
                boolean isPhoto = ((FileAttachment) attachment).isContactPhoto();
                if (isPhoto) {
                    attachment.load();
                    FileAttachment photo = contact.getContactPictureAttachment();

                    String filename = photo.getName() + ".jpg";
                    photo.load(new FileOutputStream(filename, true));
                    return filename;
                }
            }
        }
    } catch (Exception ex) {
        LOGGER.info("" + ex);
    }
    return null;
}

However, attachments.getItems() is always an empty array.

On my mailbox, I have few contacts with photos, and I can receive them by calling URL https://companyname.exchange.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx/s/[email protected]&size=HR360x360

Why I can't get a photo from the code?

Answer 1

On my mailbox, I have few contacts with photos, and I can receive them by calling URL https://companyname.exchange.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx/s/[email protected]&size=HR360x360

That request gets the Userphoto which is stored in the (Source)Users Mailbox (or low res in ActiveDirectory) and made available by that operation.

Your code is trying to retrieve the ContactPhoto which can be stored as an attachment on Contacts in a UserMailbox.

So these are two separate things so which one are you dealing with ?, As you haven't shown it you need to make sure you ExchangeServerRequest Version is set to 2010 or greater as Contact photos aren't returned in 2007. You might also want to test quickly the contacts in Question with the EWS Editor https://ewseditor.codeplex.com/ that will allow you to get the objects and see if there is a ContactPhoto Attachments using EWS.