I was at lunch today with Mike Arrington and a question came up — how do I get my data out of Flickr? I found out the other day that my RSS feed only has the ten most recent pictures in it. So how do I get the rest of the pictures out?
5 Feb
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Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Tom Morris on February 5, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Drop them an email. I’ve had a couple of problems with my Flickr account and I got really good tech support via email. I’m surprised they don’t have a “backlog” feed.
I also found this: http://sunkencity.org/flickrbackup/
It’s Java based, so it should work on Mac and Windows.
Posted by kosso on February 5, 2006 at 3:33 pm
this bit in their API shoud get you what you need (at least I don’t think there’s limitation to the amount you can get back)
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.people.getPublicPhotos.html
then you could use a different part of the api (fro mthe getPublicPhotos response)
eg: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.getSizes.html
to get the format of the photo you want.
it shouldn’t be too tricky for some who understands the api to write a scrpt in their language of choice to get the data you request
😉 – I wouldn’t be at all suprised if there were already scripts to do this. – it just depends what script language you like
Posted by Michael Arrington on February 5, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Ummm…we need an API or a full feed, not an email address.
Posted by Eran on February 5, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Try their API. Its straight forward and the last time I checked, if should give you access to all of your data.
Posted by Eran Sandler on February 5, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Hmm… More specifically, check the details for the following APIs:
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.people.getInfo.html – Use this on yourself and you’ll get the date of the first photo.
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.html – Use this to search for all of YOUR photos starting from the date you got from the getInfo function.
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.getInfo.html – Use this to retrieve information per each photo, from which you can build the URL to download it.
Posted by Eran Sandler on February 5, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Hmm… More specifically, check the details for the following APIs:
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.people.getInfo.html – Use this on yourself and you’ll get the date of the first photo.
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.html – Use this to search for all of YOUR photos starting from the date you got from the getInfo function.
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.getInfo.html – Use this to retrieve information per each photo, from which you can build the URL to download it.
Posted by kosso on February 5, 2006 at 3:49 pm
here’s the first page of your photos (of 4 – 500 per page)
http://www.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.people.getPublicPhotos&api_key=b7bdb51530297d37c46aedb778c289c4&user_id=22221172%40N00&per_page=500
with this you need to take the photo->id attribute and run that result against the flickr.photo.getSizes function to get url you need.
voila! api goodness.
Posted by kosso on February 5, 2006 at 3:53 pm
just add &page=1 2, 5 or 4 to that usl and you;ll get the other pages.
btw: this is using their ‘demo’ api key, so if it doesn’t work, that might be why and you’ll need your own api key.
fyi: your user id is: 22221172%40N00
saving you the hassle of finding that out via flickr.people.findByUsername
😉
Posted by kosso on February 5, 2006 at 3:57 pm
err…1,2,3 or 4 , even 😉 – to that url
Posted by kosso on February 5, 2006 at 4:28 pm
And finally… using the data from the big url above, you vould just run the ‘photo’ attributes for ‘id’, ‘secret’ and ‘server’ at create:
thus : your Macword badge… ( ‘o’ denotes the original image )
To get other sizes, simply change ‘o’ at the end after the underscore to:
s = small square 75×75
t = thumbnail, 100 on longest side
m = small, 240 on longest side
[none] medium, 500 on longest side
b = large, 1024 on longest side (only exists for very large original images that were resized during upload)
o = original image, either a jpg, gif or png, depending on source format
there ya go
Posted by Brian Carnell on February 5, 2006 at 6:01 pm
“Ummm…we need an API or a full feed, not an email address.”
Um…..you could e-mail them and ask them about the API.
Posted by attengine » Still diggin…. on February 5, 2006 at 7:23 pm
[…] Is this thing still on? I just saw Dave post an mp3 enclosure to his WordPress blog. Now, he could have done that via the WordPress interface I think, but surely, not our Dave. His he got a new trick up his sleeve for the OPML Editor WordPress tool? Hmmmm.. we shall see. […]
Posted by attengine » Now it’s gone again on February 5, 2006 at 8:14 pm
[…] Hmmm.. something fishy is going on here. […]
Posted by attengine » Now it’s gone again on February 5, 2006 at 8:16 pm
[…] Hmmm.. something fishy is going on here. It’s gone from the post, but still remains in the feed […]
Posted by David on February 5, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Flickr Export, OS X:
http://connectedflow.com/flickrexport/
Flickr “back up”, perl:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Net-Flickr-Backup-2.3/
Posted by Simon on February 6, 2006 at 7:11 am
I thought there was already an api in place?
Posted by Stewart Butterfield on February 6, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Flickr launched with a full and complete API, documented here: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/ (if you want to get a feel for how it works, chose a method and then try the “api explorer”). There are hundreds of applications built on it.
There are a number of utilities built on the API for downloading all your photos and metadata, and we’ll eventually offer one ourselves (right now you can order DVD backups through a partner, but not a complete download).
Given that some accounts have 10s or even 100s of thousands of records associated with them (photos, tags, notes, comments, contacts, etc.) a “full feed” isn’t really feasible (and wouldn’t capture all the data anyway).
There’s no need to write to us to ask about the API: the documentation and mailing list archives are all public and non-commercial keys can be obtained instantly. There are also a number of Flickr groups devoted to hacks and the API.
Posted by Vinu’s Online Cloud » bloggin as citizen media? on February 7, 2006 at 10:40 am
[…] For example, Dave Winer had a post – Getting my data out of flickr? and there you have a dozen of comments! OBVIOUSLY a google search would have given him the answer if he did a 2 minute search. But he knows – a one sec post will give him better answer. Lets the blogosphere do the work for him! very cheesy I would say … but guess what at the end of the day its collective knowledge. its a win-win situation. I get to know more blogs, the person who commented gets more hits and gets into the blogosphere. Sometimes, I should admit – i write comments just to get noticed. […]
Posted by Dave on February 7, 2006 at 2:08 pm
This is one of those posts that leaves my head shaking. I’m glad Stewart chimed in about Flickr’s API, but why did he even have to? This is something that you could have easily figured out yourself by just typing the words “Flickr API” into Google (first hit, no less!). Sometimes, I wonder how it could *possibly* be easier for you to craft entire posts about things like this than it is for you to just do the handfull of Google searches it would take to find the answer out on your own. (It was the same with your BitTorrent post a while back, asking another question that could have been answered with a single Google search.)
Posted by vinu on February 7, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Dave,
I am slightly confused, what are you saying in the last comment??
What I meant was – its easier for your to let the thoughts out into the blogosphere and wait the proper instructions to come!
Posted by Alex Barnett blog : Attention podcast : Attention with Steve Gillmor, Joshua Porter and Alex Barnett on February 8, 2006 at 11:32 pm
[…] What is Attention and Attention Data? (2:45) The Attention Market (9:20) Communicating Attention (12:00) Attention data recording and feedback – Eric Horvitz – Model of Attention and Marc Smith – AURA: The Advance User Resource Annotation System (14:00) The ROI on Attention Data (16:20) Defining the Attention Problem (17:30) Infinite information and finite time (18:30) RSS the Attention enabler (22:50) Monetizing Attention data (27:10) The cycle of RSS consumption Attention for the masses and the edge cases (35:00) Attention value exchange and Root Markets – (38:40) Being marketed information (43:00) Getting my data in and out 46:11 On Gestures, Gesture streams and GestureBank (47:50) Summing up (53:00) End (58:19) […]