Using phpFlickr to Integrate Flickr Photos on Your Own Site

Written By: Jay

- 21 Oct 2006 -
















Description: In this tutorial I will explain how to use the phpFlickr API to interact with Flickr and display photos on a web site.

  1. Summary and Requirements
  2. History
  3. Getting Started
  4. How Does This Work
  5. On Your Own

History

A few weeks ago my wife asked me why I was always "messing around with cool stuff" as I had put it, as opposed to working on our personal site? She said that I am always telling here about this cool Ajax and RSS stuff and some "delicious" thingy but I haven't worked on our site in years. "Why is that?" She went on to say that instead of playing around why don't I fix our photo gallery and make it cool.

She had a good point and I figured I should spend some time working on our original site so it's not so out of date. I started looking at different options for a PHP based Photo Gallery that would be easy for my wife to use and maintain. Some options that came up were Plogger, myGallery Plugin for WordPress, Gallery2 (and the WP Plugin) and ZenPhoto but each one seemed to lack the Web2.0 shininess of script.aculo.us. One of the draw backs of being a developer is the "I can build it my self" mentality which made a hosted solution out of the question.

Even though I was against using a hosted solution I started investigating some hosted options like Zoto and Flickr because they both offer an API to hack against. I even found an interesing Picasa hack that used the XML export to build a photo site from but in the end it turned out to be a too much of a hassle.

After more searching I found the tool for WinXP/Mac/Linux and I immeaditaly knew that a simple drag n drop tool is what my wife really needed to make it as simple as possible for her to publish photos. BTW- Zoto has a tool that works just like the Flickr tool. I found the Flickr tool here at The Great Flickr Tools Collection where I also found phpFlickr. That's when I decided that I could swallow my pride and compromise by using a hosted gallery but take advantage of the API.

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