Attach photo to Activity through Google + Domains API - google-plus

Question

Im trying to post an activity with an image to a google+ domain with the new google + domains API
Posting an activity is working fine but when i try to attach a photo to it, i receive a 500 error with null description.
This is the code:
String msg = "Activity with photo";
// Create a list of ACL entries
PlusAclentryResource resource = new PlusAclentryResource();
resource.setType("domain"); // Share to domain
List<PlusAclentryResource> aclEntries = new ArrayList<PlusAclentryResource>();
aclEntries.add(resource);
Acl acl = new Acl();
acl.setItems(aclEntries);
acl.setDomainRestricted(true); // Required, this does the domain restriction
// Create a new activity object
Activity activity = new Activity()
.setObject(new Activity.PlusObject().setOriginalContent(msg))
.setAccess(acl);
// Attach the link
Activity.PlusObject.Attachments attachment = new Activity.PlusObject.Attachments();
attachment.setObjectType("photo");
attachment.setUrl( "http://c299813.r13.cf1.rackcdn.com/MuseeduLouvre_1335428699_org.jpg" );
attachment.setId( randomId ); //if not specified, google returns an error with "you must specify the photo id"
List<Activity.PlusObject.Attachments> attachments = new ArrayList();
attachments.add(attachment); // You can also add multiple attachments to the post
activity.getObject().setAttachments(attachments);
activity = plus.activities().insert("me", activity).execute();
When the code calls the execute, i receive this error:
com.google.api.client.googleapis.json.GoogleJsonResponseException: 500
{
"code": 500,
"message": null
}
at com.google.api.client.googleapis.json.GoogleJsonResponseException.from(GoogleJsonResponseException.java:145)
The same code but with the attachemnt lines commented works fine. Has someone managed to create an activity with an image? any clue?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Directly attaching a photo via URL isn't possible. The process works slightly differently, as described here: https://developers.google.com/+/domains/posts/attaching-media
If you don't have the actual binary data of the photo you will first have to "download" the photo. Then you can upload the actual photo data via the media().insert method, which will give you the Photo Id which you can then use in attachment.setId().
setUrl isn't necessary in this case.
If you want to attach a photo as URL, this could also be handled like an article attachment (same as if you would just copy/paste the URL into a Google+ post). In that case you would use attachment.setObjectType("article") and only set the Url. The id isn't necessary in this case.