How do you get the Profile Picture URL through code?

Question

How do you get the user profile picture from an SPUser profile?

Answer 1

do you need some kind of permissions to get the pictures of other users than yourself? I only get my own picture.

Answer 2

You can do something like this:

public string GetUserPicture(SPSite site)
{
    string userAccount = "domain\\account";

    ServerContext ctx = ServerContext.GetContext(site);
    UserProfileManager upm = new UserProfileManager(ctx);
    UserProfile up = upm.GetUserProfile(userAccount);

    return  up["PictureUrl"].Value;
}

Answer 3

You can look at the User Information List, to grab the Picture column contents. It's a hidden field, so you might have to write a console app to get the columns, or find a reference somewhere online.

Tobias Zimmergren did a blog post on getting user data from the User Information List from an SPUser object: http://www.zimmergren.net/archive/2008/06/25/sharepoints-hidden-user-list-user-information-list.aspx