Great API Hack for Flickr - Email!
I finally got around to finishing a little application that I was writing that takes the export from ACDSEE database and uploads it to Flickr via the Flickr Email API. Its is a fantastic option for me for a couple of reasons:
- Sending by email is a lot easier then the Flickr API
- Here in Australia our bandwidth costs are still relatively expensive and the ISP I am with charges for upload but doesn’t charge for email usage. So by using the email option I save on the upload cost against my download limit.
- I have access to an email sending routines (smtpmail.p) in Progress ABL (formerly 4GL) that can send binary attachments.
- ACDSEE Dumps its database as an XML file
- With a small manipulation you can load that XML File into a ProDataSet with the new 10.1A READ-XML method on the aforementioned dataset
- Once in the dataset, you can walk through the photos with a simple:
FOR EACH asset:
<DO something>
end.
If you want more information about the Flickr Email uploading feature here a couple of pointers from different parts of the Flickr FAQ:
What is the email address I use to send my photos to Flickr?
Well the absolutely first thing you need to know is the email address to send the photo to which is then added to your Flickr account. But what about making sure that only the group of people that you want to be able to view the photo can view the photo? That is handled in the next section:
How do I set privacy levels on my photos?
A very nice feature to just add some characters to the email address in use to force the photo into the right category. If you don’t use anything, you get the default category. Now you can upload the photo and set its privacy level, what about setting tags for the photos? Well you can set default tags but there is another method to add tags:
How can I add tags to photos I upload by email or my phone?
So there you have it. All you need to know about uploading photos to Flickr via email. As you can see the power of the uploading is great and simple to use. Now what would be great (and I haven’t checked all the other services like PhotoBucket, etc) is if other sites took on the same standard for email upload as Flickr because that way you can write an application or add the functionality to your Photo Management application to upload the photos with the tags on it via email and then just plug in the email address to the photo platform you want to use and Bob’s your Uncle!
What next? I am considering trying to do the same thing but in .Net so that I could publish the application that I wrote.
What are you doing to upload your photos to Flickr or your favorite site? Have you got any good tips?
Molly
(Note: the Photos added are my kids and where uploaded via my Flickr upload via email tool)
