Flickr Mashups (Programmer to Programmer)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 419 pages
• Published by: Wrox January 30, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0470097744
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0470097748
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

Product Description
Expert Flickr developer David Wilkinson guides you through a series of software projects that show you how to build mashups using the popular photo service Flickr. He explains the process of remixing Flickr on your own web site and then mashing it up. Along the way, you’ll learn how to take advantage of mashup technologies such as REST, Ajax, RSS, and JSON. Plus, hands-on examples will help you gain the skills to design a variety of remixes and mashups that take advantage of Flickr’s core services.

Back Cover Copy
Why wait for Flickr to offer the features and functionality that you need when you can create them on your own Expert Flickr developer David Wilkinson guides you step-by-step through a series of software projects that show you how to build mashups using this popular photo service. He clearly explains the process of remixing Flickr on your own web site and then mashing it up. Along the way, you'll learn how to take advantage of mashup technologies such as REST, Ajax, RSS, and JSON.

From finding photographs and illustrating news feeds to displaying your photographs on Google® Maps, you'll discover how to develop a wide range of projects using content from both Flickr and other sources. You'll also gain the skills to design a variety of remixes and mashups that take advantage of Flickr's core services. With the help of numerous hands-on examples integrated throughout the pages, you'll understand how things work so you can quickly produce your own innovative applications.

What you will learn from this book:

• How to use feeds to retrieve photo details
• Methods for using the Flickr API to access items such as tags, sets, groups, and interestingness
• How to use Flickr authentication to access private photographs and update information
• How to upload photographs from your own applications
• Ways to remix the Flickr web site with Firefox® and Greasemonkey
• Different ways to display photographs using ImageMagick
• Techniques for building complex systems that use Flickr as a source of information
• Tips for improving software performance and scalability

Who this book is for

This book is for web developers who have some prior experience with a language such as PHP, JavaScript, or Perl. Everything in the book is explained in detail along with source code, which makes this a useful resource regardless of your experience level.

Reader Reviews
Flickr is the photo sharing web application that started making people like taking photos again, Of course since flickr came on the scene many others have come up such as Zoomr and Yahoo Photos but neither allow developers to truly make use of its data with the flick api which allows sharing and manipulation of its photo data. This is the first book covering this topic of creating a mashup with flickr so it has the pressure of covering the right material to help newbies like me to understand how to use an api. Although a background in web scripting and or JavaScript is not required since the material is not too technical and the author explains it well enough that the reader does not need to know too much. The first chapter covers what are mashups and what technologies are used such as client technologies like HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript and DOM, JSON and Ajax. Then the author briefly explains the server-side technologies that are involved like PHP, Perl, REST, SOAP, and databases. A nice introduction on the many pieces of web mashups. The next chapter gives a quick introduction on using flickr aw a user on how to use some of the tools of flickr like the organizr (to organize your photos into sets), tagging, geo-tagging interface, joining groups, and linking your photos. The third chapter gets started with getting the flickr API key. Once you get the key the author goes into showing you how to setup your development environment. The author goes though setting up an environment with ASP using IIS (Internet Information Server) and PHP with Apache as well as using Perl in a Windows or Unix environment. Since mashups can use any server-side technology, it is great that the author explains three of the most popular ones for broad range of server-side technologies. The next chapter focuses in detail about the flickr API itself. Flickr accepts API calls in three different formats such as REST, SOAP, and XML-RPC. The author gives of each even though in my opinion using REST is the easiest and most common. Then flickr methods and objects are dicussed in showing the reader how to retrieve flickr images in any variation by invoking the specific methods and send the right parameters. The author gives some good examples of creating photostreams and putting specific images on your web page. Chapter 5 goes though the client-side version of manipulating a flickr badge and putting the requests on the server as well. Chapter 6 goes through showing an image gallery using sever-side script in PHP and mixing in a little Ajax for good measure. Chapter 7 shows you how to authenticate using an API kit with some open source PHP tools to create some more robust applications. Chapter 8 shows you how to create an upload page using the flickr api. The rest of the book goes into more examples of flickr mashups using other open source tools like ImageMagick, GoogleMaps, GreaseMonkey, RSS, Technorati, and others. Too much to cover but this book has it all. A great book on learning more about mashups and api ans using the flickr api to create some new and exciting web applications.