While developing an application to access Flickr accounts, instead of using the Flickr API directly or writting my own wrappers over the Flickr API, I searched online for an existing library and I found the FlickrJ project. This project provides a nice wrapper around the Flickr API and allowed me to get up and running developing Flickr applications quickly. I found the FlickrJ API a little challenging at times so I ended up writting my own fascade classes over FlickrJ to make it a little more user friendly. This project is the result.
Using Ferris FlickrJ is very easy.
First you need to create a Flickr API Key. Login to Flickr. Click on Your Account. Click on Extending Flickr. Down at the bottom are Your API Keys.
After creating your API Key, to use Ferris FlickrJ do the following:
String key = "Your Flickr API Key";
String secret = "Your Flickr API Secret";
String token = "Generated when an application is authenticated";
FlickrApiCredentials credentials
= new FlickrApiCredentials(key, secret, token);
FlickrJFascade fascade
= new FlickrJFascade(credentials);
That's it. Now you can access your Flickr account.
Now you might be wondering, what is. . .
String token = "Generated when an application is authenticated";
. . .where do I get this value? This value is generated by the FlickrJ library after you have authenticated your Flickr API Key and API Secret. The easiest way to do this is to download and run the Ferris Flickr Authentication application which generates this value for you.