[Python/Golang] Solving Imgur Image Download Redirection Issues

title: [Python/Golang] Solving Imgur Image Download Redirect Issues
published: false
date: 2025-02-10 00:00:00 UTC
tags: 
canonical_url: https://www.evanlin.com/til-imgur-redirect/
---

![Google Chrome 2025-02-12 08.33.04](https://www.evanlin.com/images/2022/Google%20Chrome%202025-02-12%2008.33.04.png)

## **Problems Caused by Recent Changes**

Recently, Imgur made technical updates to its image links, causing direct access to URLs of the type `i.imgur.com/{image_id}.jpeg` to be redirected to the `imgur.com/{image_id}` page. This behavior makes it difficult to directly display or download images in applications or web pages. Furthermore, this redirection mechanism also affects the normal operation of user scripts and browser extensions, potentially causing tools that were originally able to prevent redirection to fail. Therefore, developers need to find new ways to bypass this limitation.

## **Solution Strategies**

To solve this problem, we can adopt the following strategies:

1.  **Set the correct HTTP headers** Specifically, set the `Referer` header to simulate accessing the image from the Imgur page. Use a reasonable `User-Agent` header to avoid being treated as a crawler request.
2.  **Use the Imgur official API** The official API can stably obtain direct image URLs, but requires registration and obtaining a Client ID and Client Secret. This method is usually more reliable, but requires additional procedures and rate limit considerations.
3.  **Browser extension or script updates** Update extensions like NoImgurRedirect to adapt to the latest changes, or write custom scripts to handle redirection issues.

## **Example Code**

Here is a Python code example demonstrating how to set the correct headers to download Imgur images:

python
import requests

def download_img(image_id):
# Build URL
direct_url = f"https://i.imgur.com/{image_id}.jpeg"
referer_url = f"https://imgur.com/{image_id}"

# Set request headers
headers = {
    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36",
    "Referer": referer_url
}

try:
    response = requests.get(direct_url, headers=headers)
    response.raise_for_status()

    if 'image' in response.headers.get('Content-Type', ''):
        filename = f"{image_id}.jpeg"
        with open(filename, 'wb') as f:
            f.write(response.content)
        print(f"Image downloaded successfully：{filename}")
    else:
        print("Download failed: The returned content is not an image")

except requests.RequestException as e:
    print(f"Download failed: {e}")

Test download (assuming image_id is "example123")

download_img("example123")

## **Example Code (Golang)**

Here is a Golang code example demonstrating how to set the correct headers to download Imgur images:

go
package main

import (
"fmt"
"io/ioutil"
"net/http"
)

func downloadImg(imageID string) error {
directURL := fmt.Sprintf("https://i.imgur.com/%s.jpeg", imageID)
refererURL := fmt.Sprintf("https://imgur.com/%s", imageID)

req, err := http.NewRequest("GET", directURL, nil)
if err != nil {
    return err
}

req.Header.Set("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36")
req.Header.Set("Referer", refererURL)

client := &http.Client{}
resp, err := client.Do(req)
if err != nil {
    return err
}
defer resp.Body.Close()

if resp.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
    return fmt.Errorf("HTTP status code: %d", resp.StatusCode)
}

body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(resp.Body)
if err != nil {
    return err
}

filename := fmt.Sprintf("%s.jpeg", imageID)
err = ioutil.WriteFile(filename, body, 0644)
if err != nil {
    return err
}

fmt.Printf("Image downloaded successfully：%s\n", filename)

return nil

}

func main() {
imageID := "example123"
err := downloadImg(imageID)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err.Error())
}
}

## **How to be careful with similar issues in the future**

1.  **Pay attention to platform update notifications** Regularly check Imgur's official announcements and community feedback to stay informed of any technical changes.
2.  **Maintain existing tools and library versions** Keep browser extensions, scripts, and related library versions up to date to ensure they can adapt to new situations.
3.  **Evaluate alternative solutions and backup strategies** Consider using other third-party services as alternatives and switch to different storage platforms when necessary to reduce risk dependency.
4.  **Comply with terms of service and policies** When implementing any workflow, be sure to comply with the service terms and policies of the relevant platform providers to avoid adverse consequences such as account bans.