My last fortnight has been spent updating the photo-URLs within these diaries of pictures that I’ve taken whilst mapping. By default the Mapillary page will normally show a small version of any photo in it’s GIS-database, whilst behind it is a map using OSM-mapping; here is an example of that, showing the front of a business called AST, as it was displayed in a 12 July 2019 diary.

In the past the owner of the photo — the person that uploaded it to Mapillary — was given a button that would give them a URL that allowed them to download the raw file of the original photograph. That was useful for webpages such as these diaries, since it allowed the photograph to be displayed. However, Mapillary has changed it’s policy on the usage of those download URLs.

At some time in the past Mapillary changed the URL format for both map-display pages & download-file pages. The original map-display URLs had the following format (1st line below) whilst the download-files were 2nd-line below (the IDs in each URL were identical for a specific photo):

• https://www.mapillary.com/map/iM/<12-digit-alpha-ID>
• https://d1cuyjsrcm0gby.cloudfront.net/<12-digit-ID>/thumb-2048.jpg

Mapillary changed the format to the following (sorry about this):

• https://www.mapillary.com/app/?pKey=<16-digit-numeric-ID
• https://scontent-man2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/m1/v/t6/<150-digit-alpha-ID>?stp=s2048x1152&ccb=10-5&oh=<61-digit-alpha-ID>&_nc_sid=122ab1

Mapillary also made 3 crucial extra decisions:

1. The map URL would auto-rewrite via a 302 between the old & new format
2. The old Download URL would NOT rewrite to the new
3. The new Download URL would timeout after 14 days (or maybe less) (appears to be just 2 days)

Thus, after 14 days of trawling through every relevant page & changing all relevant URLs the photos are still not showing. I’m not happy.

And here the relevant photo to see what happens:

Update 7 July 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that used a Mapillary download URL in the old format are broken (the Mapilliary map URLs, which show a photo within the context of an OSM map, have also changed and are redirected via a HTTP/1.1 302 Found, but the download URL hostname no longer exists and gives a “No address associated with hostname” DNS error). I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I hope also on yours).

Update 7 July 2022 evening

I discovered just now that the Mapillary photo on this diary page was broken yet again, as are others on other diary pages. Loaded into a web-page by itself the download-URL gave the error: url is timed out. It seems that Mapillary has decided that these freely-donated photographs can only be used for it’s benefit.