Profile API

The Profile API returns a member's LinkedIn profile, subject to the member's privacy settings.

Usage

You must use an access token to make an authenticated call on behalf of a user.

Retrieve Current Member's Profile

Permissions

This API requires one of the following permissions:

Request

To identify and retrieve the current member's profile based on the access token, simply call:

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/me

Sample Response

{
   "firstName":{
      "localized":{
         "en_US":"Bob"
      },
      "preferredLocale":{
         "country":"US",
         "language":"en"
      }
   },
   "localizedFirstName": "Bob",
   "headline":{
      "localized":{
         "en_US":"API Enthusiast at LinkedIn"
      },
      "preferredLocale":{
         "country":"US",
         "language":"en"
      }
   },
   "localizedHeadline": "API Enthusiast at LinkedIn",
   "vanityName": "bsmith",
   "id":"yrZCpj2Z12",
   "lastName":{
      "localized":{
         "en_US":"Smith"
      },
      "preferredLocale":{
         "country":"US",
         "language":"en"
      }
   },
   "localizedLastName": "Smith",
   "profilePicture": {
        "displayImage": "urn:li:digitalmediaAsset:C4D00AAAAbBCDEFGhiJ"
   }
}

Retrieve Other Member's Profile

To retrieve another member's profile, you will need access to the Person ID, available only via certain limited access APIs and subject to member privacy settings.

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/people/(id:{person ID})

You can also retrieve multiple profiles at once:

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/people?ids=List((id:{Person ID1}),(id:{Person ID2}),(id:{Person ID3}))

This API will only return data for members who haven't limited their Off-LinkedIn Visibility.

Field Selections

By default, only the Lite Profile Fields are returned for a profile request. See the Profile Fields document for a full list of supported fields.

To request more or less fields, you must have additional permissions that are only granted to select partners. Please refer to the field projections on proper syntax. Below is a sample request:

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/people/(id:{profile ID})?projection=(id,firstName,lastName)

Person ID

The id returned in the response is the unique identifier of the user. This should be stored and referenced where possible as LinkedIn APIs utilize both URNs and IDs. In our API documentation, we reference this id as person ID.

Public Profile URL

The vanityName from Basic Profile Fields is used to represent the public profile URL in the follow format: www.linkedin.com/in/{vanityName}.

New Location Display Name

The geoLocation from Location Fields is the new location field. As LinkedIn transitions through the Bing Geo location migration, we will try to maintain backwards compatibility with the legacy location and locationName field as much as possible.

To determine a member's profile location, refer to the geoLocation field. If the autoGenerated field is false, then the member's location has already migrated to Bing Geo taxonomy. This means that the most up-to-date display name is retrieved from geo field in geoLocation. If the field is true, then you can rely on either location or geo in geoLocation.

In order to get the display name from the geo URN value of geo field, please use the Geo API. Alternatively, you can utilize decoration in your Profile request:

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/me?projection=(geoLocation(geo~,autoGenerated))

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/people/(id:{person ID})?projection=(geoLocation(geo~,autoGenerated))

{
  "geoLocation": {
    "geo": "urn:li:geo:12345",
    "autoGenerated": false,
    "geo~": {
      "id": 12345,
      "defaultLocalizedName": {
        "locale": {
          "country": "US",
          "language": "en"
        },
        "value": "San Francisco Bay Area"
      }
    }
  }
}

Legacy Location Display Name

The location from Profile Fields contains several fields that are used to determine the member's displayed location nam

If the userSelectedGeoPlaceCode is present, then you will need to call Places API - GET to retrieve the name. To use the API, you will need to translate the countryCode to a countryURN by simply appending urn:li:country: in front of the code. See below for an example:

{
   "location":{
      "postalCode":"12345",
      "standardizedLocationUrn":"urn:li:standardizedLocationKey:(us,12345)",
      "userSelectedGeoPlaceCode":"1-1-0-23-30",
      "countryCode":"us"
   }
}

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/places/country=urn:li:country:us&placeCode=1-1-0-23-30

If the userSelectedGeoPlaceCode is NOT present, then you will need to call Regions API - FINDER standardizedLocation to retrieve the name. To use the API, you will input the standardizedLocationUrn value into the standardizedLocation parameter. See below for an example:

{
   "location":{
      "postalCode":"12345",
      "standardizedLocationUrn":"urn:li:standardizedLocationKey:(us,12345)",
      "countryCode":"us"
   }
}

GET https://api.linkedin.com/v2/regions?q=standardizedLocation&standardizedLocation=urn:li:standardizedLocationKey:(us,12345)

Once you make the appropriate request, you can simply retrieve the display location name from the value of the name field for each respective API.