Flickr and using its API – post 1

Hello everyone,

Its time to talk about and its API, how to use it and things associated with it. This is going to be the first of a series of blogs of how to use flickr and its API.

In this first post, we are going to talk about the API Key and its uses. We will also get our minds ready to use these values in our flash application.

First of all lets start with the flickr.com apply an API Key site. http://www.flickr.com/services/api/keys/apply/

Applying for an API key is relatively simple and no guidance is required. A commercial key takes about 4 weeks and requires some form of approval. A testing or non commercial key can be obtained immediately. I recommend you apply for both together to make sure you have a commercial key when your site is ready to go live. If its commercial anyway.

Once you have got an API Key and secret, you can actually start to use them to get frobs. You might be wondering what the hell a frob is but actually it seems to me like nothing more than a first level security key that flickr wants to assign to you at every instance of your api key call. Frobs expire after 60 minutes.
An example of a frob can be found here http://www.flickr.com/services/api/explore/?method=flickr.auth.getFrob These API testing tools are just neat.

Alright once you have got your frob, you need to get a token. If I am correct on this frobs are basically whats needed for just viewing photos, but if you need to upload or modify photos, you need a token. Tokens are like level 2 security keys that flickr has implemented to ensure that you aren’t just logging in without authenticating yourself via a valid frob. Tokens last forever or until you decide to revoke them at your access page. You are going to need a workaround for this for  your flash to keep your user at your site. OR you can just use a preattained token which is what I decided to do for my project.

In my next Flickr tutorial, I will talk about how to integrate flickr api and flash and some basic examples and commands.

See you next time.

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