What are some good alternatives to the Picasa Search API?

Question

I'm writing a sample web based application that requires image based results to be delivered in the form of an XML document. Currently I'm using Picasa search API. I'm getting the XML response on requesting the API call URL. Here is my current implementation:

private void fetchImageURLs() {
        try {
            String urlString = "https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/all?";
            urlString += "q="+searchTerm;
            urlString += "&max-results="+numImages;
            urlString += "&start-index="+offset;

            // Get XML from Picasa API
            URL url = new URL(urlString);
            DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
            DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
            Document doc = db.parse(url.openStream());
            doc.getDocumentElement().normalize();

            // Parse XML to obtain image URLs
            NodeList nList = doc.getElementsByTagName("content");
            for (int i = 0; i < nList.getLength(); i++) {
                Node nNode = nList.item(i);
                Element eElement = (Element) nNode;
                String imageUrlString = eElement.getAttribute("src");

                // Push the image URLs on the queue to be used by fetchImagesAndSave()
                imageURLs.push(new URL(imageUrlString));
            }
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

I would be thankful if you could help me with figuring out how to do the same using Twitter/Facebook/PhotoBucket or Flickr API. Thanks.

Answer 1

For Flickr:

You can use the Flickr4Java API.

But since all you need is the search you could use the REST API:

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.test.echo&name=value

The method you need is flicker.photos.search documented here.

To use the Flickr API you need to have an API key though, so you should apply for one.

Answer 2

If you want to work with multiple APIs without learning the specifics of each then you should check out Temboo.

Temboo normalizes API access, so that you talk to multiple image APIs (and lots more) using the same syntax. Temboo also helps you convert API responses to the format of your choice (in this case you could convert from JSON to XML where appropriate).

(Full disclosure: I work at Temboo)