flapi.sh

This is a set of tiny command-line tools for experimenting with the Flickr API. It's very similar to the Flickr API Explorer, but in my terminal.

For example:

$ flapi flickr.photos.getInfo photo_id=52782497889
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rsp stat="ok">
  <photo id="52782497889" secret="c92b337091" server="65535" farm="66" dateuploaded="1680219042" isfavorite="0" license="0" safety_level="0" rotation="0" views="5174" media="photo">
    …

I use these tools when I want to do some quick experiments with the API and get a particular value or see how some XML looks.

It's not meant for use in a production app – there are better ways to do that!

Usage

flapi - call the API

You can use the flapi script to call individual API methods. It pretty-prints the XML returned from the API, with syntax highlighting.

You pass the method as one argument, and any query parameters as a second argument. For example:

$ flapi flickr.photos.search user_id=124495553@N05&tag=radiotechnology

Some Flickr API methods don't need any query parameters, so you just pass the method:

$ flapi flickr.commons.getInstitutions

The nice thing about flapi is that I can wrap it to build other small tools for digging into the API.

flphoto - get a single photo

You can use the flphoto script to get information about a single photo, using the flickr.photos.getInfo API.

You pass the photo ID or a URL to the photo as a single argument. For example:

$ flphoto 52783721105
$ flphoto https://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/4058778064/

fluser - look up a user

You can use the fluser script to get information about a single user.

You can pass their NSID, or a URL to their profile page on Flickr, for example:

$ fluser "https://www.flickr.com/photos/12403504@N02/"
NSID:     12403504@N02
username: The British Library
realname: British Library
URL:      https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary

I find this particularly useful when I need to quickly look up the NSID for a user whose profile I'm looking at.

Installation

You need the following tools for flapi:

• curl, to make HTTP requests
• keyring, to get a Flickr API key from your system keychain
• Pygments, for syntax highlighting
• xmllint, for pretty-printing XML

You need additional tools for flphoto and fluser:

• flickr-url-parser, to parse Flickr URLs
• jq, to parse JSON

Once you have all your tools installed, get yourself a Flickr API key and save it in your system keychain:

$ keyring set flickr_api key
Password for 'key' in 'flickr_api': <Enter your API key here>

Then add this repo to your PATH, and you can run the scripts.

License

MIT.