Using the Contact API v3 I had a working implementation for uploading a photo to an existing contact.
Since a couple of weeks this fails with 404. The implementation has not been changed when the API servers started to sent back 404s and I don't see any indication what exactly changed and would result now in the 404s.
I'm using HTTP PUT + the photo URL of the contact.
One interesting observation I made was that the contact's self-URL changes which each request (the provided details are still always the same and correct).
Did anyone notice something similar ?
Edit: Link to issue: http://code.google.com/a/google.com/p/apps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=3301&q=contact&colspec=API%20ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Stars%20Opened%20Summary
tried different photo formats and sizes, different content types and even photos which had been uploaded previously (when it was still working). Nothing changed the behaviour of returning 404.
w.r.t to change contact ids: the contact ID changes between API invocations. I first thought it could be related to reopened connection( no keep-alive) that contact ids change. However what speaks against this being the cause of the issue is that first retrieving a contact and then editing a contact's address is possible without any issues.
authentication does not seem to be problem as well - otherwise editing a contact's address would not work as well.
PS: I'm using the JSON output format when retrieving the contact.
PS2: s/GET/PUT in step 3 ( I tried to change PUT to GET to see if it still returns 404... which it does).
PS3: am not using any client library but implement the protocol directly (which should not be relevant for the HTTP PUT on the photo link
After hours of investigation I found out that this is particular an issue using OAuth1. Using OAuth2 the exact same photo links which had been returned when requesting a specific contact record using OAuth1 work and return the photo data on HTTP GET. I expect HTTP PUT for photo links using OAuth2 to succeed as well.
Remains open if if there's some kind of workaround for OAuth1.