flickr-set-get

Flickr-set-get is a command line application written in node that allows you to download an entire set of photos from Flickr (a gallery). Once you have it installed, to start the download you just need to:

$ flickr-set-get get <setid> <userid>

Install

As simple as installing any other global node package. Be sure to have npm and node (>= 0.8 version, or io.js >= 1.0) installed and launch:

$ npm install -g flickr-set-get

Configuration

Usage screenshot

Flickr-set-get is already configured with a default api key to allow you to use it immediately. Anyway it’s highly recommended to create your own Flickr api key in the Flickr app garden especially if you intend to make authenticated requests to download private photos and photo sets. Having your own api key will allow you to avoid rate limiting and to use a more secure authenticated communication.

To configure flickr-set-get to use your own api key you need to launch the following command:

$ flickr-set-get config

An interactive guide will then help you to complete the configuration process.

Start the download

At this stage you should be ready to download a Flickr photo set. A set is identified by two parameters: a setId and a userId. Given the url of a set (gallery) you can easily spot these two parameters as shown in the image below:

SetId and UserId parameters in a Flickr gallery url

So, given the url https://www.flickr.com/photos/21272841@N05/sets/72157623488969696, to start the download you need to run:

$ flickr-set-get get 72157623488969696 21272841@N05

And then just watch the command to do the hard work for you!

Download private photos and sets

Flickr supports private photos and private sets (sets that contains only private photos). To be able to download these photos from your sets you need to authenticate yourself and to send authenticated api requests. In order to do so you need to do configure your authentication options and get an authentication token with the flickr-set-get config command. Then you need to use the option --authenticated when using the flickr-set-get get command.

It’s highly recommended to use your own api key and secret to achieve an optimal level of security. In fact the default api secret is shared in plain text in the code base of flickr-set-get, so it’s not really a secret. Someone that might intercept a flickr-set-get authentication token for your Flickr profile (generated with the default api key and api secret) will be able to download all your private photos. Anyway it’s not mandatory to provide personal api key and api secret and you can use the default values, especially if you just want to quick test the application to download some photos (ensure to be in a safe network in that case, and to revoke your authentication token at the end of the test).

Sub-commands, options and help

Flickr set get supports different sub-commands. You can access a comprehensive documentation with:

$ flickr-set-get --help

This will display all the available sub-commands and options. You can also access the specific help of a sub-command with:

$ flickr-set-get <sub-command> --help

For example flickr-set-get get --help will show:

  Usage: get|g [options] <setId> <userId>

  download a set of photos

  Options:

    -h, --help             output usage information
    --apiKey <value>       The flickr API key
    --authToken <value>    The flickr auth token
    --authenticated        Use authenticate request to access private photos (ensure to provide a valid `authToken` as option or in your config file)
    --config <value>       Define the config file to use
    -c, --concurrency <n>  The number of concurrent requests
    -o, --outputDir <s>    The directory where to save the downloaded images
    -s, --size <s>         The size of the image to download (eg. "Original", "Large", "Medium", etc.)
    -vs, --videoSize <s>   The size of the video to download (eg. "Video Original", "HD MP4", "Mobile MP4", etc.)
    -n, --noOverwrite      If set does not overwrite existing files

Current status

This project is currently on its early days so it’s expected to have (a lot of) bugs and imperfections. Feel free to contribute to its development and to report bugs.

Programmatic API

Developers can integrate part of the code into their own apps (want to build a GUI for this command line app? :P) Here’s a small documentation to get you going in these cases.

If you install the package as a dependency into an existing project (npm install --save flickr-set-get) you can require it’s main module:

var Flickr = require('flickr-set-get');

var apiKey = 'someApiKey';
var options = {};

var client = new Flickr(apiKey, options);

Here follows a comprehensive documentation of the Flickr class.

Class: Flickr

A class that defines a set of methods to download an entire set of photos (gallery or set) from Flickr.

Available options:

concurrency number the maximum number of concurrent http requests (default: 10)
outputDir string the path where to save the images (default: ".")
size string The size of the image to download, eg. "Original", "Large", "Medium", etc. (default "Original")
noOverwrite boolean if true avoids to override already existing files (default: false)
auth boolean|object if false it will not use authentication. Otherwise it should be an object containing the keys secret and authToken (or miniToken) (default: false)

This class extends from {EventEmitter} and emits several events:

error Error in case of error
setInfo Object when info about a given set are successfully retrieved
photoSizes Object when the info about a photo (url to download the sizes) are retrieved
photoDownloaded Object when a photo is successfully downloaded
photoSkipped Object when a photo is skipped (already downloaded)
done Object when all the photo of the set are downloaded

Flickr.downloadSet(setId, userId)

Starts the download of the photos from a given Flickr set. Triggers events during the whole process

Parameters

setId: string, Starts the download of the photos from a given Flickr set. Triggers events during the whole process

userId: string, Starts the download of the photos from a given Flickr set. Triggers events during the whole process

Returns: Flickr

Flickr.getAuthToken(cb)

Get the authToken. Requires that the auth option has been correctly configured providing secret and miniToken