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

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. Comment | | (Report this)