Kris and Betsy Smith http://www.croncast.com This is the keyword feed for simplexml_load_file. Once cool, Kris and Betsy are now living on a cul de sac and breeding. Betsy really should be on the road making mad cash but that would interfere with breastfeeding. Podcasting for Download every M-W-F by 3:00 P.M. CST. en-us Palegroove Studios 2004-2008 No Croncast, Kris, Betsy, Comedy, Parenting, Funny, Palegroove, Croncast, eBay, Goodwill This is the keyword feed for simplexml_load_file. Once cool, Kris and Betsy are now living on a cul de sac and breeding. Betsy really should be on the road making mad cash but that would interfere with breastfeeding. Podcasting for Download every M-W-F by 3:00 P.M. CST. This is the keyword feed for simplexml_load_file. Once cool, Kris and Betsy are now living on a cul de sac and breeding. Betsy really should be on the road making mad cash but that would interfere with breastfeeding. Podcasting for Download every M-W-F by 3:00 P.M. CST. http://www.croncast.com/images/croncast_itunes.jpg http://www.croncast.com This is the keyword feed for simplexml_load_file. Once cool, Kris and Betsy are now living on a cul de sac and breeding. Betsy really should be on the road making mad cash but that would interfere with breastfeeding. Podcasting for Download every M-W-F by 3:00 P.M. CST. Croncast - Kris and Betsy Smith info@palegroove.com http://www.croncast.com Palegroove http://www.croncast.com/rssk/1329/Make-the-Flickr-PHP-API-not-so-ugly-and-easier-to-use_photo-frame_digital.php Blog Flickr API and using RSS 2.0 feeds instead. The reason? They come with all the photo stream data that you need in a nice little package. Things like title, description, tags, date taken, date uploaded, image dimensions, etc.

What is missing from the RSS feed the ability to load comments with a photo and choose how many items are returned in the feed. The API, however, will let you load hundreds of images and load comments for each photo.

There is a catch though. The API is broken up into about a 75 different calls. Not one single call to the server can match the data that is returned in the RSS feed. To get the same data I need to make approximately 8 different calls to Flickr. Not good.

What use is the API?

It gives me the ability to create a historical back up of my photos in their most basic form with urls, date, descriptions (with html stripped) and tags. It also gives someone building an application a rich data source to do some of the things that Flickr isn't already doing - the purpose of an API.

After working with it for a few hours I became frustrated. PHP is my poison of choice and the PHP examples that Flickr uses all return serialized data. Which is great and easy to work with if you already know what the XML namespaces are but without them it is hard to access the data. And in some cases impossible without printing out the serialized array and looking at it because the returned serialized array's keys don't match the XML namespaces. Not to mention children are buried in deeper arrays that aren't as easy to access as say $title = $item->photo['title'].

Here's how I cleaned up the mess. If you are PHP guru then I am sure you could get this down to one script.

An 'include' script, sort of. View this script by URL on your server to see all name spaces:

1) Create a new PHP file declaring xml as file type - header("Content-Type: text/xml")
2) Use the url that Flickr supplies to return content in REST format
3) Comment out the line for serialization
4) Use PHP's file_get_contents() function
5) echo the returned XML

<?php header("Content-Type: text/xml"); # call the API $flickr_url = file_get_contents("http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?api_key=YOUR-API-KEY&method=DATA-TO-RETURN); echo $flickr_url; ?>

A loader script:

1) Create a loader script
2) Call the include script - $resp = simplexml_load_file("YOUR INCLUDE SCRIPT URL");
3) Get the data out by name space, the same ones that Flickr documents

<?php $resp = simplexml_load_file("INCLUDE-SCRIPT-URL"); // Check to see if the response was loaded, else print an error if ($resp) { $results = ''; // If the response was loaded, parse it foreach($resp->photo as $photo) { $title = $photo->title; echo $title; } } ?>

To view the name spaces that you will want to access simply open up the include script by url in your browser.

For now I will stick with the RSS 2.0 feeds for blog submissions but once I have some free time I will be using the API code above to create a cached archive for my own safe keeping.

Tags: photo frame digital Flickr API PHP simple simplexml_load_file ]]>Flickr API and using RSS 2.0 feeds instead. The reason? They come with all the photo stream data that you need in a nice little package. Things like title, description, tags, date taken, date uploaded, image dimensions, etc.

What is missing from the RSS feed the ability to load comments with a photo and choose how many items are returned in the feed. The API, however, will let you load hundreds of images and load comments for each photo.

There is a catch though. The API is broken up into about a 75 different calls. Not one single call to the server can match the data that is returned in the RSS feed. To get the same data I need to make approximately 8 different calls to Flickr. Not good.

What use is the API?

It gives me the ability to create a historical back up of my photos in their most basic form with urls, date, descriptions (with html stripped) and tags. It also gives someone building an application a rich data source to do some of the things that Flickr isn't already doing - the purpose of an API.

After working with it for a few hours I became frustrated. PHP is my poison of choice and the PHP examples that Flickr uses all return serialized data. Which is great and easy to work with if you already know what the XML namespaces are but without them it is hard to access the data. And in some cases impossible without printing out the serialized array and looking at it because the returned serialized array's keys don't match the XML namespaces. Not to mention children are buried in deeper arrays that aren't as easy to access as say $title = $item->photo['title'].

Here's how I cleaned up the mess. If you are PHP guru then I am sure you could get this down to one script.

An 'include' script, sort of. View this script by URL on your server to see all name spaces:

1) Create a new PHP file declaring xml as file type - header("Content-Type: text/xml")
2) Use the url that Flickr supplies to return content in REST format
3) Comment out the line for serialization
4) Use PHP's file_get_contents() function
5) echo the returned XML

<?php header("Content-Type: text/xml"); # call the API $flickr_url = file_get_contents("http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?api_key=YOUR-API-KEY&method=DATA-TO-RETURN); echo $flickr_url; ?>

A loader script:

1) Create a loader script
2) Call the include script - $resp = simplexml_load_file("YOUR INCLUDE SCRIPT URL");
3) Get the data out by name space, the same ones that Flickr documents

<?php $resp = simplexml_load_file("INCLUDE-SCRIPT-URL"); // Check to see if the response was loaded, else print an error if ($resp) { $results = ''; // If the response was loaded, parse it foreach($resp->photo as $photo) { $title = $photo->title; echo $title; } } ?>

To view the name spaces that you will want to access simply open up the include script by url in your browser.

For now I will stick with the RSS 2.0 feeds for blog submissions but once I have some free time I will be using the API code above to create a cached archive for my own safe keeping.

Tags: photo frame digital Flickr API PHP simple simplexml_load_file ]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:11:15 -0600 tag:croncast.com,1329 For months I have been bypassing the title; echo $title; } } ?> To view the name spaces that you will want to access simply open up the include script by url in your browser. For now I will stick with the RSS 2.0 feeds for blog submissions but once I have some free time I will be using the API code above to create a cached archive no photo frame, digital, Flickr API, PHP, simple http://www.croncast.com/rssk/1056/Saturday-code-goodness-means-flickr-flafoo-and-twitter_TwitterGram_Dave-Winer.php Blog
The flickr + twitter code is why all of the pics have been showing up as posts and why all the people following me on twitter got blasted with 20 messages at once . . . sorry for that. I promptly setup a twitter account to test with.

For the last two months I have been sending photos from my phone to flickr and having them inserted as blog posts. Which has been pretty awesome and a ton of fun. But what I was missing was the twitter connection. Not anymore.

Now, thanks to this post from Dave Winer and code that I had already written for @tweetair (coming very soon, I swear), flafoo and Croncast, it took about ten minutes to get it up and running.

Dave's post was important because it turned the light for me. The "Ahaa" moment was when I realized I was already parsing my flickr feed every two minutes anyway looking for photos that I had marked to be blog posts. All I needed to do was differentiate what was to be a blog post from that of a twitter update.

It took about two seconds.

I make blog posts from flickr by starting a description of a photo with an asterisk, like so "*", and adding my content after that. For twitter I use "^" to tell the script to send a tweet. If I use them together "*^" then I get both.

Dave's setup with TwitterGram is much cleaner, using only the tag portion to note that a flickr upload is meant to be a tweet, simple and clean. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to tweet their flickr photos with ease. My code is custom and considerably more messy for a guy that wants to have control over blog posts, blog posts and tweets or just tweets by uploading photos to flickr.

API's + the RSS 2.0 + curl + simplexml_load_file = ridiculously low threshold for a mediocre coder to join the integration party.

Speaking of API's, I will be updating flafoo today and possibly tomorrow with new categories that will henceforth be known as "flafoogeries" and the ability for anyone to add a "flafoogery" from the site.

Tags: TwitterGram Dave Winer twitter flickr flafoo ]]>
The flickr + twitter code is why all of the pics have been showing up as posts and why all the people following me on twitter got blasted with 20 messages at once . . . sorry for that. I promptly setup a twitter account to test with.

For the last two months I have been sending photos from my phone to flickr and having them inserted as blog posts. Which has been pretty awesome and a ton of fun. But what I was missing was the twitter connection. Not anymore.

Now, thanks to this post from Dave Winer and code that I had already written for @tweetair (coming very soon, I swear), flafoo and Croncast, it took about ten minutes to get it up and running.

Dave's post was important because it turned the light for me. The "Ahaa" moment was when I realized I was already parsing my flickr feed every two minutes anyway looking for photos that I had marked to be blog posts. All I needed to do was differentiate what was to be a blog post from that of a twitter update.

It took about two seconds.

I make blog posts from flickr by starting a description of a photo with an asterisk, like so "*", and adding my content after that. For twitter I use "^" to tell the script to send a tweet. If I use them together "*^" then I get both.

Dave's setup with TwitterGram is much cleaner, using only the tag portion to note that a flickr upload is meant to be a tweet, simple and clean. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to tweet their flickr photos with ease. My code is custom and considerably more messy for a guy that wants to have control over blog posts, blog posts and tweets or just tweets by uploading photos to flickr.

API's + the RSS 2.0 + curl + simplexml_load_file = ridiculously low threshold for a mediocre coder to join the integration party.

Speaking of API's, I will be updating flafoo today and possibly tomorrow with new categories that will henceforth be known as "flafoogeries" and the ability for anyone to add a "flafoogery" from the site.

Tags: TwitterGram Dave Winer twitter flickr flafoo ]]> Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:31:21 -0500 tag:croncast.com,1056 So far I've got a new flickr + twitter script done and need to move on to flafoo while I have some daylight to burn.The flickr + twitter code is why all of the pics have been showing up as posts and why all the people following me on twitter got blasted with 20 messages at once . . . sorry for that. I promptly setup a twitter account to test no TwitterGram, Dave Winer, twitter, flickr, flafoo http://www.croncast.com/rssk/823/What-am-I-reading_simplexml_load_file_Google-Reader-shared-feed.php Blog see what and who I am reading in Google Reader during the day.

The link "kris is reading" in the navigation will take you to the little nirvana that displays just what the hell I read during the day.

This new page is brought to you by my new best friends, simplexml_load_file and a feeling that I am falling behind.

Tags: simplexml_load_file Google Reader shared feed kris is reading Kris Smith ]]>see what and who I am reading in Google Reader during the day.

The link "kris is reading" in the navigation will take you to the little nirvana that displays just what the hell I read during the day.

This new page is brought to you by my new best friends, simplexml_load_file and a feeling that I am falling behind.

Tags: simplexml_load_file Google Reader shared feed kris is reading Kris Smith ]]> Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:24:10 -0500 tag:croncast.com,823 New time killer for you as you can see what and who I am reading in Google Reader during the day. The link "kris is reading" in the navigation will take you to the little nirvana that displays just what the hell I read during the day.This new page is brought to you by my new best friends, simplexml_load_file and a feeling that I am no simplexml_load_file, Google Reader shared feed, kris is reading, Kris Smith, http://www.croncast.com/rssk/806/Is-your-system-working-Ill-tell-you-for-$75_eBay-affiliate_eBay-developer.php Blog
Though I can say from the developer perspective errors like this are really helpful:

1) Http/1.1 Service Unavailable
2) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable

Are these errors account related? Is the service really down? Oy vey.

Any of you XML wizards have an idea of what I am encountering?

Tags: eBay affiliate eBay developer eBay API eBay XML developer ]]>
Though I can say from the developer perspective errors like this are really helpful:

1) Http/1.1 Service Unavailable
2) [function.simplexml-load-file]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable

Are these errors account related? Is the service really down? Oy vey.

Any of you XML wizards have an idea of what I am encountering?

Tags: eBay affiliate eBay developer eBay API eBay XML developer ]]> Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:19:12 -0500 tag:croncast.com,806 For $75 and one hours worth of time I can ask eBay if their developer XML API service is broken. It has been down now for over 6 hours and not a peep in any message board, service update or email regarding it's status. However, if I want to pay the money I could ask a live human being for a yes or no answer. I need a service like no eBay affiliate, eBay developer, eBay API, eBay XML developer,