Fetchr4SSP(TM) is a Fetchr(TM)-based PHP script that will fetch photos from Flickr to display as albums inside the awesome gallery software SlideShowPro!
- Allows you to fetch all of your Flickr photosets as albums inside your gallery
- Allows you to fetch any Flickr user’s public photosets, recent photos, “favorites”, and/or “most interesting” photos (according to Flickr) and load them as albums inside your gallery
- Allows you to fetch an album of photos from a Flickr group
- Allows you to fetch an album of photos filtered by specific tags
- Allows you to fetch photos at any resolution that Flickr supports
- Allows you to fetch both public AND private Flickr photos that you have READ access
- Allows you to fetch photo descriptions from Flickr to use as photo captions inside your gallery
- Allows manual and programmatic refreshing of your XML images file, or your entire cache of Flickr API calls
The final result is a Flickr photo gallery wrapped in a premiere Flash-based slideshow interface that is delightful to your web visitors.
Visit the official Fetchr4SSP homepage!
Background
This project started for me just trying to finagle my own way of getting all my Flickr photos organized into album photosets and all available in an easy-to-use interface on one of my WordPress-driven websites. A tall order… but I knew it was doable. After fumbling with some WordPress plugins and such, nothing really worked smoothly enough. A Flash solution was needed, so purchased a license for SlideShowPro (SSP) and I couldn’t be happier! 
The next task was putting together a PHP script that would build the complex XML needed to properly load all my Flickr photos organized into photosets into SSP. I tried an existing one with some success, but it lacked a few vital functions I needed… and it wouldn’t handle certain SSP abilities. Soooo, I coded my own. And after some polishing decided to put together a sharp website to peddle my fine creation to the masses.
Web designer and developer. Loud discerner. Software engineer and 
Is this script able to pull in private flickr photos?
@Tim
Not yet, but it could. You’d only be able to display your own private photos (obviously) because I’d need you to enter your Yahoo password into the config file (it’s not currently required).
Do you think there is a desire for that?
I would love to be able to display my own private photos. If you don’t want to add it officially could you help me to add the login info to the config file?
@Tim
It won’t be that easy it turns out. You made me curious so I dug around in the Flickr API.
A couple things are annoying… the authentication is tricky, but apparently doable. But the way photos are retrieved from Flickr you cannot simply say “give me all photos from privacy level 1 (public) to 4 (friends & family)”. Although you only want private (level 5) I would gues most people would want to be able to show ALL photos (levels 1 thru 5)… or perhaps just levels 2 and 3, etc. What I’d have to do is stack the photos toegethr after getting all the different levels people wanted… but then the photos are out of order.
It gets messy. Perhaps if you explain what your intended use or target audience is… or any additional details… it can help me to determine what use cases I’d be dealing with.
I would like to display all my photos that are either public, family, or friends in the slideshow. I have almost all of my photos on flickr as family and friends and I use a separate private website to display those photos. I would love to use ssp to display those photos.
It would be nice for others to have the option to select which types of photos to display (public, private, family, friends).
The ability to show private photos is coming soon. So is showing “favorites”.
@Tim
I have added the ability to show non-public photos.
I love this software. Talk about a life saver. I have a problem though. My software will not refresh. I probably have too many pictures. After awhile will it get too big? Or does it simply pick up where it left off when building the xml file? After 30 seconds it times out. It stops and it hasn’t refreshed it yet up to where the current photosets are. Also is there a way I can utilize collections too? Thanks for your help.
Best regards,
Matt
OK, I have a support ticket into my website host. I have another question. Is there a way for me to pull in pictures from a group on Flickr? The reason I’m asking is because, I took a trip to China with a group of about 38 individuals and we all took pictures. This would be a great way to collectively pool all of our photos and soon Video (when you get that working and Flickr does something with video):o)
Another idea for running the XML builder for many photos on Flickr would be to have a program that could run the script on your computer rather than on the actual website. Then all you would have to do is simply copy over the images.xml file with a new one built on your computer. It is more convenient to have it built on the website, but if it’s too big it makes sense. What’s your thoughts on this?
@Matt
Hey, lots of good ideas. I’ve been toying with the idea of “collections” and “groups”, too.
Regarding the huge process of file updating, I address that in the FAQ on the website… check it out. My personal gallery takes around 5-10 minutes to refresh. The answer is a CRON job.
Also, even if you wanted to build the XML file locally, you’d still have to update the website manually. You could produce the same result by instead setting the cache timeout to something very large (i.e. infinite timeout) and then simply hitting the URL directly with a cache_refresh trigger… your visitors wouldn’t notice that a new XML file was being created in the background because the old one is still valid (hadn’t timed out) and doesn’t get overwritten until the new one is finished.
Thanks for responding to my questions.
As far as implementation of collections and groups, I would pay for that right now. It would certainly help me out a lot. I’m sure people would love that too.
I’m having trouble because when I refresh the CACHE with photolord.com/fetchr4ssp.php?cache_refresh
or XML with photolord.com/fetchr4ssp.php?xml_refresh it timeouts at around 50 seconds. They said they increased the php limit, but it keeps timing out.
Now I don’t claim to be a website guru, but it seems to me this is a php timeout problem. What do you think. You would know. Also, you mentioned something about setting the cache timeout to something very large (i.e. infinite timeout). How do I do that? Maybe that would solve my problem. I was looking in the file for something with the cache timeout and I can’t find that. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
Best regards,
Matt
$fetchr_settings['cache_expire'] = 31557600;
That will make the cache last a YEAR!
When you do “photolord.com/fetchr4ssp.php?xml_refresh” manually it probably will, indeed, timeout on your browser if you’ve got a lot of photos. But that doesn’t mean it “failed”. The code is still working behind the scenes to refresh the cache and rebuild the XML file… it just didn’t respond fast enough to satisfy the web server’s timeout… but it’s still working. After five to ten minutes or so your XML file will be a new one… and in the meantime people hitting the gallery will still see the soon-to-be-old XML file without delay.
I setup a CRON job - a periodic job on my host that will refresh my cache, using “cache_refresh”, daily. I set my timeout to be 90000 (25 hours), so that nobody sees any delay on my gallery.
Just to point out to you… Using “xml_refresh” will rebuild the XML file from EXISTING CACHE using whatever tweaks you’ve made to the fetchr4ssp.php configuration settings. This should be fairly fast (10 seconds at most). Once you run “cache_refresh”, however, you will have just wiped and started rebuilding your entire stored cache… so for about 5 to 10 minutes after that using “xml_refresh” won’t be fast at all… because there’s no existing cache to use to “instantly” rebuild the XML file.
Get it?
I can certainly “rush” groups and collections along… some PayPal love would be appreciated
and you’ll be the first to get it as soon as it’s working, before I’ve commented it, packaged it, updated the docs, updated Payloadz.com… and FINALLY sent it to everyone (usually a week delay). I’ll even put your entire amount of PayPal love toward the little girl we sponsor in Bolivia through Compassion International!!!
I just checked the Flickr API and they don’t support fetching photos/photosets from a collection. That’s crazy!? I joined their API discussion group and apparently they’ve been talking about providing this for a WHILE, but they haven’t yet.
I’m starting to understand it a little better now. My php are timing out after 50 seconds, but I can simply refresh the XML about 4 or 5 times and it builds my images.xml file that way.
As far as collections go for Flickr hopefully there will be an implementation soon for API. I would pay for the ability of group api. I could start a group and it would certainly help out a good deal. Let me know if you are able to get group API working for Flickr and I will pay for that. Thanks for your help.
I have completed the ability to display a group’s photo pool. (and a few other goodies)
Awesome! How do I get it?
Email me.
Ok great, I emailed you. Can’t wait to try out groups with Fetchr4SSP.
Version 1.3 is out!
* Added option for an album of Flickr group photos
* Added option for an album of photos filtered by specific tags
* Added option for an album of a user’s “most interesting” photos (according to Flickr)
* Switched method of specifying a Flickr user from their Flickr username to the Flickr user ID
Hi Steve,
I’ve been messing around with Slideshow pro to stream flickr photosets to a nice gallery interface, came up against the 20 image limitation of the flickr feeds & then found your script, hurray!
Can you tell me if it’s possible to specify the size of the image to load from flickr? i.e. the 500px wide ‘medium’ version would be appropriate. I’ve found SSP grabs the originals by default which can be very large and therefore take a long time to load.
Many thanks, A.
Twenty pics is lame!
Fetchr can fetch you 500 per album!
Yes, Fetchr4SSP lets you choose which Flickr size image to fetch for both your thumbnails and your full-size pics. I have mine set to “Medium” for thumbnails and “Original” for full-size… but you’re right, the originals can take a while to load, and usually Medium is fine.
I also have a size option in Fetchr called “Biggest” that will fetch the biggest Flickr photosize available (Original if available, otherwise Large if available, otherwise Medium). I also have a similar size option called “Bigger” that will fetch Large if available, otherwise Original if available, otherwise Medium.