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March 25, 2006
Flickr & Google APIs
Yesterday I figured out how to connect to Flickr and Google through their Java APIs. That was fun. I had been interested in doing this for a while, and now the opportunity came up in a Java class I'm taking. We'll be developing a little tool that I'll probably be talking more about in the coming weeks.
Google's API is surprisingly easy to use. It took me about an hour to really understand the details...which is a good amount of time to have spent on something like that. Flickr's API, meanwhile, is a little harder to grasp. This is because there's so much you can do with it. The true Java wrapper for Flickr, flickrj, proved to be a little over my head for the moment, so I connected directly using Java's URL class and Flickr's REST protocol. Man, is that easy to do. I like the idea of connecting to a source via REST, and when I find the time I'll surely build some things to become more comfortable with it. I'll probably stick with PHP, though, since I find it a lot easier to deal with than Java, and it's really quick and easy to get stuff up and running on the web.
Anyway, enough technogeekery. Back to work...
Posted at March 25, 2006 12:25 PM