Strange behavior in Buffer app, new error: "Invalid image url parameter supplied" while image url is public and accessible

Hi @Bram 

Good question.

You can try using an online hosting service (e.g. OneDrive, GDrive, Dropbox, Box), like you mentioned.

You may want to try opening a ticket with Zapier Support related to this: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

Hi Troy,

Thanks for the feedback, I've raised a ticket with the support team.

Kr Bram

Hey there, @Bram! I did some digging and it looks like you’re stumbling on a known bug with the Buffer app, specifically with the Photo URL field throwing an “Invalid image URL parameter” error. 😔

It sounds as if part of the issue may be with encoded URLs, which would explain why the original image URL worked in your test.

One recommended workaround was using a Formatter step to decode it:

Formatter – Text – Decode URL

Do you think that could work?

Here was another workaround that was shared on how to extract absolute URLs for images, this one was specifically for Google Drive links though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1joksnUW04

In the meantime I did add you to the bug report so we’ll keep you in the loop once a fix has been released by the Buffer team. We’ll also be sure to post here at that time. 🙂

HI Christina and Troy

@Troy Tessalone I did test it with the image being stored and picked from One drive, this didn't word unfortunately, it resulted in the same result, also if i decoded that image through the formatter.

@christina.d thanks for your reply! Please see below results with the decoded URL, unfortunately no succes, but maybe i am doing something wrong.

Set-up of the action

The data before the formatting:

After formatting:

added in the “add to buffer” action

Testing action:

Result:

Do you guys have anyother suggestions of what I could test/try?

Hi there, @Bram! 👋

Sorry to hear the suggested workaround of decoding the URL didn’t work. You’re not doing anything wrong! I’m wondering if it’s an issue with spaces in a filename specifically.

Could you try with an image that has dashes (-) in it’s name instead of spaces?

My thinking here is that if it’s an issue with just the encoding of spaces, then an image with dashes should be able to go through to Buffer without error. In which case I can flag this information up to the developers working on fixing the bug. Looking forward to your reply!

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay in my response, this usually happends when an issue is resolved ;).

I do think the dashes “-” resolved the issue, in both cases with OneDrive and the Placid App, the last part of the path, did not have the dashes. @SamB if you could inform the developers to further investigate that would be great.

The workaround I used is to upload the images to wordpress, which does create dashes instead of spaces and used the image from there without any errors.

Thanks for the help and advice! Great team.

KR Bram