Twitter GET users/profile_image/:screen_name, Nodejs get latest user profile_image output as a base64 encoded data URI, avoid the 302 redirect of the call with request module.

server.js

/*
 * Access the profile image (Twitter GET users/profile_image/:screen_name) for a user with the indicated screen_name.
 * Currently this resource does not return JSON (or XML), but instead returns a 302 redirect to the actual image resource.
 * Use requests request.head with option followRedirect set to false to get the image file name from the json in the header response.
 * Using the image file URL get the profile image and convert to base64 encoding to use as in this example as data URI (which could be saved to a DB/storage etc for later use etc).
 * example call : http://127.0.0.1:4444/?screen_name=daithi44
 */

var http = require('http'),
  request = require('request'),
  url = require('url');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  var twitterwho = url.parse(req.url, true).query;
  if (twitterwho.hasOwnProperty('screen_name')) {
    request.head({
      uri: 'http://api.twitter.com/1/users/profile_image?screen_name=' + twitterwho.screen_name + '&size=normal',
      followRedirect: false
    }, function (error, imageresponse) {
      var regex, imageuri, imagedata, base64, prefix, requestImg, data;
      if (!error && imageresponse.statusCode === 302) {
        regex = new RegExp('https://');
        imageuri = imageresponse.headers.location.replace(regex, 'http://');
        requestImg = http.get(imageuri, function (res64) {
          prefix = 'data:' + res64.headers['content-type'] + ';base64,';
          imagedata = '';
          res64.setEncoding('binary');
          res64.on('data', function (chunk) {
            imagedata += chunk;
          });
          res64.on('end', function () {
            base64 = new Buffer(imagedata, 'binary').toString('base64');
            data = prefix + base64;
            res.writeHead(200, {
              'Content-Type': 'text/html'
            });
            res.end('<img src="' + data + '"/>');
          });
        });

      } else {
        displayThis();
      }
    });
  } else {
    displayThis();
  }

  function displayThis() {
    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
    });
    res.end('something else');
  }
}).listen(4444);
console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:4444/');