17

I've been making a react app and recently whenever I try to access images from imgur like so 

this.setState({
  imgUrl: `https://i.imgur.com/${this.props.image.id}b.png`,
  imgBigUrl: `https://i.imgur.com/${this.props.image.id}l.png`
});

And it's being rendered like this

<img src={this.state.imgUrl}/>

But I keep getting 403 forbidden, but when I use postman or visit it in the browser it's fine. I'm also accessing the API by passing in an album url like

https://imgur.com/gallery/zrUFj

and getting all the images from there to be displayed in the app (where i get 403 errors)

I'm unsure where I could be have done something wrong, I've also tried getting a new client ID for the API authorization, still hasn't worked. Anyone have any suggestions?

Justin Mercado
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2 Answers2

23

Imgur's CDN seems to restrict access to images from a 127.0.0.1 referer. This has been reported to them as an issue (matter of server configuration).

Meanwhile try to change your dev server host from 127.0.0.1 to localhost or maybe your real IP address.

xpt
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Sewer Orłow
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  • This worked for me. Thanks! If you don't mind me asking, where did you find this out? I've been searching for a while now and I haven't stumbled upon that info yet – Justin Mercado May 11 '17 at 12:40
  • Glad to hear that. I came across the same issue recently. Simply investigated the response headers in both cases and tried the approach. Notice that you will have the same issue with the app on production build. Just serve it on your IP address not `localhost`. – Sewer Orłow May 11 '17 at 15:21
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    Imgur just wrote to me that they fixed the issue on their end. You may use `localhost` again. – Sewer Orłow May 11 '17 at 21:16
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    For me the issue is the exact opposite, `127.0.0.1` doesn't work while `localhost` does – rraallvv Aug 24 '18 at 17:55
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    I updated the answer just now to reflect the actual case now, i.e, `127.0.0.1` doesn't work while `localhost` does. – xpt Sep 18 '20 at 22:18
12

Note that a quick and hacky way to fix this is to simply remove the referrer header either via a <meta> tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer">
</head>
<body>
  ...
</body>
</html>

or in your fetch:

await fetch("https://i.imgur.com/iie9XhM.jpg", {referrer:""})

or (as mentioned by @Theblockbuster1) in the img tag:

<img src="https://i.imgur.com/iie9XhM.jpg" referrerpolicy="no-referrer">
joe
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