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Flex based Flickr API Authorization control

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

I just checked in some updates to the ActionScript 3 Flickr library. The biggest change is that I checked in a Flex control that will provide a UI and handle all of the communication to authorize an application with Flickr.

There is no documentation on it, and as I have built it for projects I am using, there are probably some API gaps, but it seems to be pretty solid.

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Here is a simple example of how to use it:

import com.adobe.webapis.flickr.authorization.events.AuthorizationEvent;
import com.adobe.webapis.flickr.authorization.AuthorizationView;
import mx.core.IFlexDisplayObject;
import mx.managers.PopUpManager;

//open the authorization panel
private function openAuthorization():void
{
    var p:IFlexDisplayObject = PopUpManager.createPopUp(this, AuthorizationView, true);
    
    var auth:AuthorizationView = AuthorizationView(p);
    
    //get this from flickr
    auth.flickrAPIKey = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
    
    //get from flickr
    auth.flickrAPISecret = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX";
    auth.isPopUp = false;
    
    p.addEventListener(Event.CLOSE, onAuthorizationClose);
    p.addEventListener(AuthorizationEvent.AUTHORIZATION_COMPLETE, onAuthorizationComplete);

    PopUpManager.centerPopUp(p);    
}

private function onAuthorizationClose(e:Event):void
{
    PopUpManager.removePopUp(IFlexDisplayObject(e.target));
}

private function onAuthorizationComplete(e:AuthorizationEvent):void
{
    trace(e.authToken);
    trace(e.user.username);
}

Basically, this will open a panel that walks the user through the authorization steps (which requires a visit to the Flickr site in the user’s browser). Once the authorization is complete, an event is thrown with the authorization token (which should then be saved between app sessions).

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The api requires that your app have an api key and secret key, both of which you can grab from flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/services/api/keys/apply/

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If you run into any issues, or have any suggestions either log a bug on the flickr lib project site, or post a comment here. Plus, if anyone thinks that can make the UI look prettier, just ping me.

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