Download an image from a webpage to the default uploads folder

4 comments

1. I recently had to do this via a nightly cron script for a social media stream. $parent_id is the ID of the post you want to attach the image to.

   function uploadRemoteImageAndAttach($image_url, $parent_id){
   
       $image = $image_url;
   
       $get = wp_remote_get( $image );
   
       $type = wp_remote_retrieve_header( $get, 'content-type' );
   
       if (!$type)
           return false;
   
       $mirror = wp_upload_bits( basename( $image ), '', wp_remote_retrieve_body( $get ) );
   
       $attachment = array(
           'post_title'=> basename( $image ),
           'post_mime_type' => $type
       );
   
       $attach_id = wp_insert_attachment( $attachment, $mirror['file'], $parent_id );
   
       require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/image.php');
   
       $attach_data = wp_generate_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $mirror['file'] );
   
       wp_update_attachment_metadata( $attach_id, $attach_data );
   
       return $attach_id;
   
   }
   

   ex:

   uploadRemoteImageAndAttach('http://some-external-site.com/the-image.jpg', 122);
   

2. You have no posted the code used to fetch and save the image, so is impossible to say where is the error.

   Try this code for grab and save the image:

   function my_grab_image($url = NULL, $name = NULL ) {
     $url = stripslashes($url);
     if ( ! filter_var($url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) ) return false;
     if ( empty($name )) $name = basename($url);
     $dir = wp_upload_dir();
     $filename = wp_unique_filename( $uploads['path'], $name, NULL );
     $filetype = wp_check_filetype($filename, NULL );
     if ( ! substr_count($filetype['type'], 'image') ) return false;
     try {
       $image = my_fetch_image($url);
       if ( ! is_string($image) || empty($image) ) return false;
       $save = file_put_contents( $dir['path'] . "/" . $filename, $image );
       if ( ! $save ) return false;
       return $dir['path'] . "/" . $filename;
     } catch ( Exception $e ) {
       // echo $e->getMessage(); // Is a good idea log this error
       return false;
     }
   }
   
   function my_fetch_image($url) {
     if ( function_exists("curl_init") ) {
       $ch = curl_init();
       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
       curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
       $image = curl_exec($ch);
       curl_close($ch);
       return $image;
     } elseif ( ini_get("allow_url_fopen") ) {
       $image = file_get_contents($url, false);
       return $image;
     } else {
       throw new Exception('curl is not available and fopen url is disallowed');
     }
   }
   

   Then simply use these functions in combination with your code, like so:

   $image_file_name =  @my_grab_image('http://this.is.the.image.url/image.jpg');
   if ( $image_file_name && file_exists($image_file_name) ) {
     // PUT HERE YOUR CODE
   }
   

   Remember also that you must to include wp-admin/includes/image.php in your code for the function wp_generate_attachment_metadata() to work, see the Codex

   Hope this help, but please note that all the code here is not tested.

3. You can use this function to remote upload an image to uploads folder and set it as featured image.

   function set_remote_featured_image($file, $post_id) {
       if ( ! empty($file) ) {
           // Download file to temp location
           $tmp = download_url( $file );
   
           // Set variables for storage
           // fix file filename for query strings
           preg_match( '/[^?]+.(jpe?g|jpe|gif|png)b/i', $file, $matches );
           $file_array['name'] = basename($matches[0]);
           $file_array['tmp_name'] = $tmp;
   
           // If error storing temporarily, unlink
           if ( is_wp_error( $tmp ) ) {
               @unlink($file_array['tmp_name']);
               $file_array['tmp_name'] = '';
           }
   
           // do the validation and storage stuff
           $id = media_handle_sideload( $file_array, $post_id, $desc );
           // If error storing permanently, unlink
           if ( is_wp_error($id) ) {
               @unlink($file_array['tmp_name']);
               return $id;
           }
   
           set_post_thumbnail( $post_id, $id );
       }
   }
   

   Usage:

   set_remote_featured_image("http://example.com/image.jpg", 1);
   

4. Just use default wp (v2.6.0+) function:

   media_sideload_image( $file, $post_id, $desc, $return );

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