Strange Symphonies The best way to predict the future is to invent it

Batch Download of Photos From Flickr Based on Their Tag

For the FOSS.my event, I wanted everyone to tag their photos with foss.my or foss.my 2008. Because this makes it easier to easily see FOSS.my buzz as it happens on Flickr!

A Tale of Sucky Wordpress Plugins

I was looking for a plugin to grab Flickr photos by a specified tag, so that we can use it in the foss.my gallery. Though there are many Flickr plugins for Wordpress, there was none catered to my requirements. Unable to find a solution, I thought it was quicker to hack one myself.

So this script just expanded from there, and I quickly had a Flickr batch downloader.

[block:important]There are several requirements:

• Download phpFlickr, and unzip it to the same directory as the script.
• You need to obtain a Flickr API key.

[/block]

Use the source

<?
/*
* phpFlickr
* http://phpflickr.com/
*
* Flickr API
* http://www.flickr.com/services/api/
*
* Flickr API call flickr.photos.search
* http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.html
*
* Photos are available via the following format:
* http://farm{farm-id}.static.flickr.com/{server-id}/{id}_{secret}_[mstb].jpg
*
* For more information visit http://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.urls.html
*
* Applying for a Flickr API Key
* http://www.flickr.com/services/api/keys/apply/
*/

require_once("phpFlickr.php");

define('VERBOSE', array_search('-v', $argv));

// Download a batch of photos from the given page
function download($photos) {
$download = 0;
foreach ($photos['photo'] as $photo) {
$filename = sprintf("pics/%s-%s.jpg", $photo['owner'], $photo['id']);
$url = sprintf("http://farm%d.static.flickr.com/%s/%s_%s_o.jpg", $photo['farm'], $photo['server'], $photo['id'], $photo['secret']);
if (file_exists($filename)) {
if (VERBOSE)
print sprintf("33[33m %-10s %s33[0m \n", "Skip", $url);
else
print sprintf("33[33m.33[0m");
continue;
}
if (VERBOSE)
print sprintf("33[32;1m %-10s %s33[0m \n", "Download", $url);
else
print sprintf("33[32m.33[0m");

file_put_contents($filename, file_get_contents($url));
$download += 1;
}
return $download;
}

$flickr = new phpFlickr("YOUR_API_KEY");
$options = array('tags' => 'fossmy, "fossmy 2008", foss.my, "foss.my 2008"');

$photos = $flickr->photos_search($options);
print sprintf("Available 33[32;1m %d 33[0m \n", $photos['total']);

// Download the first batch of photos
$downloaded = download($photos);

$page = $photos['page'];
$pages = $photos['pages'];
// Download the following batch of photos
for ($i = 2; $i < $pages; $i++) {
$options['page'] = $i;
$photos = $flickr->photos_search($options);
$downloaded += download($photos);
}
if (! VERBOSE)
echo "\n";
print sprintf("Downloaded 33[32;1m %d 33[0m/ %d \n", $downloaded, $photos['total']);

Running it

It's just as a simple as:
[block:terminal]php download.php[/block]

Sample Results:

[block:terminal]
Available 492
..................[trim]............
Downloaded 0 / 492
[/block]

It even comes with a -v flag, so you can view what files are being downloaded.