Flickr extractors

Wandora has support for extracting information from Flickr into a topic map using the Flickr online API. Three different extractors are currently provided for extracting information from a profile, a specific photo and a Flickr group. All the extractors can be found in the File > Extract menu

Flickr authentication

Flickr authentication status

Many of the Flickr API functions used in the extractors require you to authorize Wandora to access your information. When Wandora needs to call such a function, it will check if it already has sufficient permissions from a previous call, and if not, prompt the you to commence authorization. Authorization involves following a URL generated by Wandora following instructions on the flickr website. Authentication information is stored on a per-session basis, and will be cleared whenever Wandora is closed. The information can also be manually cleared via configuration of any of the Flickr extractors. You may also store the authentication information from the current session and re-enter it later.

To access the configuration dialog, ctrl-click one of the Flickr extractors in the File > Extract menu. The Flickr authentication status window displays the username of the currently authenticated user, authentication data (token and frob) and the rights that the user has granted (as of this release, only the read permission level is used.) Clicking Clear information will remove the authentication information from memory and Validate new frob and token will attempt to validate a user-entered frob and token with the Flickr API. If the validation is successful, these will be used for the duration of the current session.

Note: clearing authentication information from Wandora does not clear it from Flickr itself.

Some of the API functions called during information extraction require read permissions. If authentication information is not stored in this session, Wandora will prompt you to authorize it to obtain the required information.

Wandora is waiting for the user to finish authorization

The page displayed by Flickr when authorization is complete

Follow the URL in the text box in your web browser, log in and follow the instructions on the flickr website. Once you see the authorization complete screen (above) you can go back to Wandora and click Complete to proceed with the extraction.

Extractors

Choosing a Flickr extractor

Profile extractor

The main entry point for extracting data from Flickr is the profile extractor. The profile extractor gets a list of photos owned and marked as favorites by the profile owner. The extractor will use any usernames it finds in the current context (selected topics.) If no usernames are found, it will prompt you for a comma-delimited list of users to find information for.

Choosing a username if one wasn't found in context

Flickr group extractor

The group extractor gets a list of photos in the group's photo pool.

Sample results of the group extractor

Flickr photo information extractor

The photo info extractor gets additional data for a photo where available, including EXIF data and the photo's description.