Lewies Blog

Call me paranoid if you will, but I don’t trust my data being in full control of a 3rd party. I’ll explain to you what I’m talking about. I have been uploading all of my digital pictures to a really cool service called Flickr. I can manage my photos and organize them into sets, groups, assign tags, descriptions, titles, and much more. I love what I can do with Flickr.

Here is the problem that I’m running into. I don’t have these photos anywhere else. They are soley in posession by the Flickr servers. If anything ever happens with my account, or the service itself, then I’m out of luck.

Enter the Flickr API. The good folks at Flickr have made some services available so that us programmers can interact with the flickr servers directly with any programs that we can create. There are many choices in the protocols that you can do it with such as REST, XML-RPC, or SOAP. There are plenty of API Kits as well for Flash (Action Script), Delphi, Java, .Net, PERL, PHP, PHP5, Python, and Ruby. Naturally, I went with Flickr.Net.

I had to download plenty of individual C# files, but as soon as I was done, I was up and running in no time. Of course, I first had to get my own API Key and explain why I wanted one. The key was generated on the fly.

When I was ready, I created a quick app that would download anything that I ever uploaded. Very simple indeed. The next step would be to make the program run every night and only download what I don’t have already. It downloads all of the different sizes of the photos including the thumbnails. It looks pretty ugly rite now since it is just a working example. Here is a screenshot of the Flickr Image Downloader in action.

Tags: Flickr, Images, Photos, Download, C#, .Net, API, Flickr API, Paranoid, Data, Trust, Control, 3rd Party, Explination, Talking, Upload, Digital Photography, Cool, Service, Management, Organization, Organized, Sets, Groups, Assignments, Tags, Love, Problem, Storage, Posession, Luck, Account, Good Folks, Folks, Availability, Programmers, Programming, Interaction, Direct, Program, Protocol, REST, XML-RPC, SOAP, XML, API Kits, Flash, Action Script, Delphi, Java, PERL, PHP, PHP5, Python, Ruby, Flickr.Net, Files, API Key, Key, Gerated, On the fly, Application, Simplicity, Night, Comparison, Thumbnails, Size, Ugly, Working Example, Example, Screenshot, Downloader

This entry was posted on Monday, June 20th, 2005 at 1:11 am and is filed under Blogging, Communications, Entertainment, Friends and Family, Hobbies, Life, Programming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.