Load Flickr Pictures using JSONP API
This article was updated on 23rd June, 2016. Specifically: the code example was revised, a CodePen demo was added and formatting issues were fixed.
Flickr is a leading image and video hosting website owned by Yahoo. They offer a public API which can be used to return a list of photos matching a certain criteria.
To return an API response in JSON format, you would send a parameter format in the request with a value of json. For example, the following will return a list of photos tagged “kitten”.
https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=kitten&format=json
This method of querying the Flickr API does not require authentication. You can find a list of possible arguments here: https://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.html.
A Typical Flickr JSON Object
This is what a typical Flickr JSON object looks like:
jsonFlickrFeed({
"title": "Recent Uploads tagged kitten",
"link": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/kitten/",
"description": "",
"modified": "2016-06-19T09:32:56Z",
"generator": "http://www.flickr.com/",
"items": [
{
"title": "Portrait of Simba and Mogli",
"link": "http://www.flickr.com/photos/112684907@N06/27665373772/",
"media": {"m":"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7442/27665373772_25bb8acec1_m.jpg"},
"date_taken": "2016-06-17T17:09:38-08:00",
"description": " <p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/112684907@N06/\">stefanhuber92<\/a> posted a photo:<\/p> <p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/112684907@N06/27665373772/\" title=\"Portrait of Simba and Mogli\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7442/27665373772_25bb8acec1_m.jpg\" width=\"177\" height=\"240\" alt=\"Portrait of Simba and Mogli\" /><\/a><\/p> ",
"published": "2016-06-19T09:32:56Z",
"author": "nobody@flickr.com (stefanhuber92)",
"author_id": "112684907@N06",
"tags": "pet cats cute eye animal animals cat tiere kitten siblings katze katzen fell haustier liebe tier gemütlich petlove geschwister kuscheln schön catlove süs petlover"
},
...
19 more items
...
]
})
Load Flickr Pictures Using the JSONP API
As you can see, the JSON response is wrapped in a function jsonFlickrFeed. We can use this to pull in pictures from Flickr and display them on our web page like so:
function jsonFlickrFeed(json) {
$.each(json.items, function(i, item) {
$("<img />").attr("src", item.media.m).appendTo("#images");
});
};
$.ajax({
url: 'https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne',
dataType: 'jsonp',
data: { "tags": "kitten", "format": "json" }
});
If you’d like to learn more about JSONP, read: jQuery’s JSONP Explained with Examples
Demo
This is what we end up with.
See the Pen vKXZrz by SitePoint (@SitePoint) on CodePen.
You can read more about the Flickr API on the API homepage.
