Time For Action – getting Flickr data

The first step in our application will require us to get data from Flickr. We'll request some data and then save it to the server.

1. The first step is to figure out what sort of data we want to get. We'll use the URL we mentioned before, but we'll also specify a tag. Let's use 'bird' as a tag. Open up this URL in your web browser, and you should be able to download it as a KML file http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/geo/?format=kml&tags=bird.

2. Save the file as flickr_data.kml and place it in your map directory.

3. Open up the file and take a look at it. We won't be editing it, but just take a look to see how the data is structured. Notice that there are style tags—if we want, we can directly apply the styles from the file to our map (as we'll see soon).

What Just Happened?

We just downloaded the latest images in KML format that contained a tag called 'bird.' When you call the URL and pass in some tag, Flickr will return back to you the latest images uploaded...