get contact profile picture in base64 and not in URL

[yonatanm]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, if I want a profile picture of a contact or a group, I get the URL.
for example: https://docs.wwebjs.dev/Client.html#getProfilePicUrl (similar method on the Contact class)
From what I understand, the image can be downloaded by the browser via puppeteer, so I would prefer that it is available in base64.

• reducing traffic by avoiding downloading it on my end, especially if the browser has already done so
• to align with the MessageMedia that exposes the image in base64.

Describe the solution you'd like.

add an a method Client.getProfileMedia() which will return Promise of { mimetype: string, data: string}

Describe an alternate solution.

No response

Additional context

No response

[PurpShell]

just fetch it using node-fetch (it is a peer dependency by puppeteer so no installation needed) (also in Node 17+, this is a built-in feature, just use the function)

• Before node 17: const fetch = require('node-fetch')
  • typescript: import fetch from 'node-fetch'

const url = await client.getProfilePicUrl(chatId);
const res = await fetch(url);
const data = {data: (await res.arrayBuffer()).toString('base64'), mimetype: res.headers.get('Content-Type')};

[PurpShell]

Is there an existing issue for this?

* [x]  I have searched the existing issues

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, if I want a profile picture of a contact or a group, I get the URL. for example: https://docs.wwebjs.dev/Client.html#getProfilePicUrl (similar method on the Contact class) From what I understand, the image can be downloaded by the browser via puppeteer, so I would prefer that it is available in base64.

* reducing traffic by avoiding downloading it on my end, especially if the browser has already done so

* to align with the MessageMedia that exposes the image in base64.

Describe the solution you'd like.

add an a method Client.getProfileMedia() which will return Promise of { mimetype: string, data: string}

Describe an alternate solution.

No response

Additional context

No response

As for your concerns, the image can get quite large and you will be using resources to copy an image in pure arraybuffer to the client. And also sometimes the cached image isn't the latest, which might bring even more concern..

Thanks for your suggestion though

[SannanOfficial]

just fetch it using node-fetch (it is a peer dependency by puppeteer so no installation needed) (also in Node 17+, this is a built-in feature, just use the function)

• Before node 17: const fetch = require('node-fetch')

  • typescript: import fetch from 'node-fetch'

const url = await client.getProfilePicUrl(chatId);
const res = await fetch(url);
const data = {data: (await res.arrayBuffer()).toString('base64'), mimetype: res.headers.get('Content-Type')};

Just a minor correction: I am pretty sure it's supposed to be the contact's WhatsApp ID and not the chat ID, according to the docs and what I've tried. But please do let me know if I am wrong.

https://docs.wwebjs.dev/Client.html#getProfilePicUrl