Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with API

How to send phone pics to a spartan web site via Flickr?

ehamiter — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:16:59 -0800

What's a minimal self-hosted "blog" that hooks into Flickr's API so I can send photos from my camera directly to my web site? Ideally, I want a blog that is not a blog. I don't want tags, or articles, or categories, or spam filters, or any of that stuff. A perfect solution workflow would be this:

I take a picture with my phone
I send it to Flickr via e-mail
Flickr then posts it to my website with no interaction

The ideal layout would be a main site title, and each time I send a photo it appears as the newest one, using the title I typed. There would be maybe 10 photos on the main page. You could access earlier photos by clicking "older" or something like that which would serve as the archives.

I can do this with wordpress, movable type, typepad, etc., but they are all way too huge feature-wise and not what I want. I can also do this with blogger or tumblr, but they are not self-hosted. I tried this recently with textpattern, but the templates and general admin are much too complicated for my needs.

It should be very simple, aesthetics-wise. You could maybe change the color scheme / typography via CSS, but that's about it.

Does something like this exist? For the Flickr hook-in it needs to be a MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog or other Flickr-approved application.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Pseudo-geeks, Google Maps, bus routes and the quest for happiness.

eytanb — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:56:24 -0800

How complicated is it to create a bus map on the Google Maps API? So I saw this Google Maps mashup with NYC subways and I was wondering how hard it would be for a someone with decent geek-fu to figure out how to do it. I know that any self-respecting geek would just tuck down and tinker but I am a little stressed for time.

I am a little familiar with Javascript, PHP and MySql (more in terms of adapting then writing) and am willing to learn. I just need to know that this is not going to be a time sink. I can spend my commute throwing the actual bus routes into a KML map (is that what it is called? My knowledge in this field is limited at best.)

So what I ask of you, oh Giant Seething Meta-Brain, is what are the main steps I need to take for this? What will this require of me? How long would this take someone who is relatively proficient? What about someone with the coding skills of a drunk duck?

Utilising the Twitter API

nostrich — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:39:46 -0800

Where to start: extracting images from a Twitter search and presenting them on a webpage? I have almost no programming knowledge, but I have a small project in mind, and have no idea where to start. (And also about a week to do it in, since it's a time-sensitive project.)

Here's what I want to do:
- Get the results of a Twitter search along the lines of "something something twitpic filter:links" (ie, get all the results of a search for "something something" that include a link to a Twitpic image).
- Get a thumbnail of each Twitpic image
- Present these thumbnails on a webpage

Twitter's API can do what I want, as can Twitpic's, I'm just not sure where I should start. Presumably, I need to get the tweets, perform some kind of regex voodoo to extract the Twitpic links, and borrow Twitpic's API to get thumbnails for them.

This sounds like it should be fairly easy, but I'm a guy that doesn't have fluency in any programming language, so I can't even picture what my first step would be. I'm probably approaching this a little backwards, too -- trying to consider how Twitter's API is rate-limited, and it would need some form of caching, etc, etc. (Though I can't program, I do have some basic fundamental knowledge of the concepts and idea involved, like rate-limiting and cacheing, and such.)

So where do you think I should start? Learning the basics of X programming language seems like a sensible step 1, but I don't have much interest in actually learning to program in X, just in learning to do this in X. Whatever X may be.

It doesn't really matter if I can't do this in a week, but if it took much more than a week to do, I'm not sure it would be worth the time.

What do you think?

Google AdWords via Database?

dacoit — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:53:58 -0800

Anyone know of a way to set up a Google AdWords account so that ads and keywords can be uploaded in bulk (as a database)? I would very much like to be able to place Google AdWords ads in bulk (by the thousands), not one by one. Surely there's got to be some way to do this?

Has anyone heard of any way that this can be done? Perhaps uploading or feeding some kind of database to Google (in whatever format they require) with fields such as 1.) triggering keyword, 2.) title/text of ad, 3.) ad link, 4.) bid for the keyword, etc. ... something along those lines?

I've been searching and sifting through information about the AdWords API but with no luck so far ... and yet it's such a simple idea, surely I'm missing something obvious? If you have any experience with this kind of thing, your thoughts and ideas are very much appreciated.

What charities have APIs or allow users to write programs that donate to them

racecar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:18:28 -0800

Is there any non-profit or charity that allows you to programatically donate? E.g. I run a website and when users do certain things, I'd like to say "proceeds from such actions go to a good cause." Right now, I'm doing it by hand. I've seen Kiva come out with an API, but it's mainly for showing off their transactions, no money changes hands. I'm sure charities take PayPal?

PHP -> Twitter API at specified times: what am I Doing Wrong?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:29:11 -0800

Please help me write a PHP script that publishes Twitter updates at pre-specified times. I'm working on a script that will update Twitter with reminders about upcoming shows at a music festival, building on lodev's idea here.

I've currently got this script, which calls a text file structured like in this made-up example:

XXXUPDATE SponsorCo Stage: THE BEATLES in 30 minutes XXXTIME August 21 2009 21:30 +0200 XXXDONE 0 XXXENDLINE XXXUPDATE MegaCorp Stage: ROLLING STONES in 30 minutes XXXTIME August 21 2009 22:45 +0200 XXXDONE 0 XXXENDLINE

Proprietary format, I know. :) There are six Twitter accounts right now for separate concert stages, more may follow.

All six separate scripts are called from a Ruby file via pycron, every minute. I understand that's plenty often and I don't really need that kind of temporal resolution, but it uses relatively few processor cycles so I'm not really complaining.

As you can see in the PHP code:

if (($now <= ($utime + 30)) && ($now >= ($utime - 29))) {

if ($update[3] !== 1) {

When an update is ready for publication it should, theoretically at least, satisfy the first "if" statement and be published. The second "if" checks a "done" flag in the text file which I have as of yet not used (i.e. they're all set to 0 and the current code doesn't amend them).

Now, I "stress-tested" this with some test updates on all six accounts, including many simultaneous ones (carrying the same timestamp) on the different accounts for ten minutes with six (one for each account) every minute, and out of maybe a hundred-something tweets (I ran multiple iterations of the test) only one was dropped, i.e. it was in the text file but was not published.

Even one dropped update is unacceptable to me, and I strongly suspect I am Doing It Wrong. But how? The problem basically boils down to the following question:

What better method would there be to push out the updates reliably using the server config I currently have (XP, Apache, PHP5, Ruby, pycron), very preferably without using databases?

When it comes to scripting I really only speak PHP and a little JavaScript: even the (very basic) Ruby script was kindly provided to me for a different project.

So there's just too little time before the event to learn a new language or start out with MySQL or whatever before the event, and I'm not really eager to change to different software or change my server configuration (or set up another box) just for one-off project that will last just a few days. This is just to say that it's not due to an unwillingness on my part, but rather due to practical considerations.

If anyone could offer their insights I would be ever so grateful. Thanks in advance, guys.

How do I hook Windows desktop folder clicks?

long — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:38:45 -0800

I'd like to write a program for Windows XP that detects when a folder on the desktop is clicked and switches the desktop location to that folder, instead of the default Explorer behavior of opening the folder in a window. Roughly, the program will behave like this:
1. User left-clicks folder A on the desktop.
2. Program captures the click, changes the appropriate registry keys, and refreshes the desktop view so that folder A's contents are now displayed on the desktop. (Folder A does not open in an explorer window).

I'm competent at programming, but don't have much experience with the Windows API or hooking. From some googling, I gather that a decent approach is to hook WH_MOUSE_LL, but it seems that detecting whether the clicked object is a folder is non-trivial and potentially kludgey.

Can you advise a general approach that (1) accomplishes the described behavior and (2) isn't too hacky?

Thanks so much,
Long

MLB + API = ?

joshjs — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:22:11 -0800

I'm looking for an API that'll give me near-real-time access to the day's baseball scores, including individual player lines. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller? I'd prefer a free or modestly-priced solution. And barring an existing API, I'd welcome advice on how to construct one via screen-scraping or some other method.

(I expected this to be easier to find. :-( )

Give me my tweets from July 6, 2007

(bb|[^b]{2}) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:40:07 -0800

Extracting twitter updates for a particular date through the API... how?! I've scoured the API documentation, and I can't seem to figure this out (my hope is that I'm overlooking some simple, elegant solution). Is there a way, preferably using the REST API with PHP, to grab tweets based on a given date? I've read this question, I know about TweetDumpr, and using "since" doesn't achieve what I want since it pulls in all the unneeded tweets AFTER the specified date as well.

This isn't just a personal project; if I can get this to work, it would be on a multi-user scale, where each user supplies his or her twitter credentials and can then see their tweets when they click on a specific day. Manually downloading a CSV file and parsing it each and every time would be a waste of server resources. It seems like the API would be robust enough to handle a "SELECT ALL TWEETS FROM $date". Am I living in some simplistic tweet fantasy world or what?!

Please hope me!

Stock data for use in black box trading application?

Hypocrites — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:12:55 -0800

Stock data for use in black box trading application? I just need raw data, the current tick and the technical analysis for each tick and I need the data to be real-time. I would prefer an API with it, but if not that's fine. All I need is data, no other analysis or "features" of any kind. (e.g. no Bloomberg Terminal, Fidessa, CQG, any variation therof) This data needs to be easily manipulated in my own application that I'll be developing in C#. Thanks in advance!

atXat Blackboard Template Variables

EduTek — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:52:57 -0800

How can I find out ALL of the available Blackboard atXat (@X) template variables?! I am an instructor at a regional university in PA. We use Blackboard 7.2 as our LMS of choice. Recently I discovered Blackboard's built-in template variables, which allow me to customize my content in various ways per student, course, etc. My problem is, I have only discovered a handful of resources on line, and they suck (Two are listed below, the third is a presentation from Bb World on building blocks which is outside of the scope of what I am doing). Please help me find a documented API, FAQ, or exhaustive list of all template variables!

http://www.edugarage.com/display/BBDN/Template+variables
http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/twitchew/present/X_params.html

ISSN lookup by Journal Name

srboisvert — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:05:15 -0800

Is there a website that I can use to scrape for ISSN numbers of academic journals? I have a big list of journals that I need the ISSN numbers for. I'm also looking for a comprehensive list of social science journals (if there were a listing with ISSN numbers that would be double plus good)

Atom Python Library

k7lim — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:29:46 -0800

Is there an Atom or (better yet) AtomPub library for Python? This would save me loads of API XML design time if I can just reuse the Atom infrastructure.

Who's making money on Facebook?

Kickstart70 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:17:31 -0800

Hopefully a simple question: Has any Facebook add-on/app/page/game/whatever published how much money it has made in advertising or other revenue? Yes, I'm considering an idea. I know it's a longshot, and most don't get many users at all, but I figured before I waste a bunch of time writing something I'd like to have an idea what API-created pages, especially popular ones, are making.

Thanks in advance!

Dump that Stock!

Static Vagabond — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:07:42 -0800

Stock market related questions-- help me drown in data! I want to improve my coding skills and virtually playing the stock market seems like it might be quite a fun way to do so, but I desperately need data to enable my endeavor.

So I'm looking for two elements really,

A detailed historical dump of the stock market, per smallest time unit possible, current I can easily find a daily current/high/low/average but I want to play around with minute (or second) values ideally but can't seem to find that anywhere.

Programming: Are there any stock-brokers that let you use their API (so you can program your own automated trader/interfaces) on a play account, for free?

The first element is the main one, I can essentially just play the stock-market offline if I have that, but it'd be great fun to actually link in with a play account on a (semi) real-time basis. Who knows, in a couple of years, maybe I'll try it for real.

Extra points for good resources on introductions to the various models used to predict the markets.

Any help appreciated!

Looking for programmatic web searching for commercial purposes now that Alexa Web Search is gone.

bottlebrushtree — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:11:32 -0800

Looking for programmatic web searching for commercial purposes now that Alexa Web Search is gone. I'm looking for programmatic web search access (e.g. Google API or Alexa Web Search) for commercial purposes.

I'd like to look up product IDs for existence on the web and pass it to a human if there is at least one result. I may be searching for 10,000 to 50,000 items per day (though not every day) and would like not to be locked out due to over-usage.

It looks like Google search API and Yahoo search API are both limited in the amount of searches you can do per day. Anyone have any luck getting approved higher load access from them?

Since this is for commercial purposes I don't mind paying a (hopefully nominal) fee for access.

It looks like Alexa Web Search would have been usable/perfect, but they are closed as of this week it appears.

Any suggestions?

Print on Demand services with APIs?

steiny — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:05:33 -0800

Are there any print on demand services that offer APIs for large prints or small posters, instead of having to email requests manually, or manually fill in web forms again and again? I'm looking for something a bit like the Moo print API but for larger prints ie A4 (legal size) and up.

Ideally the service would be able to handle print runs ranging from 1 to 1000 prints or more, and would be able to bill weekly or monthly.

Display a custom rss feed in the same way that iGoogle does when you add a feed normally?

gregschoen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:38:48 -0800

I am attempting to create a Google Gadget that displays RSS feeds on the iGoogle page. The problem that I'm having is that the gadget does not display the RSS in the same way as adding an XML to iGoogle does, there is a different display depending on theme and device. So, if you add the Metafilter Gadget, which is just the Metafilter RSS feed, it displays in one way. Switch to another theme and it changes to a different display.

Sorry if this doesn't come out clear, but the question that I'm wondering is whether anyone has experience with this, and whether or not anyone is aware of a way to interact with the API at this level and display an XML RSS feed the same way that Google does. Also, better documented API for the _IG_* namespace would be helpful as well.

Library (API) for the website snapshot

chexov — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:06:05 -0800

How to save a snapshot (image) of a webpage programatically. I have a small bot that is crawling specific websites and I would like to store an low-res image of the front page once in a while.

Environment I am running at is Ubuntu and I would be very thankful if you could point me to any Python or Perl libraries I could use for this purpose. I

t could be well that I am taking this task too lightly since just a script would be not enough and once would need a complete browser environment for correct rendition. If you also could point me to any public API that could be accessed for this purpose, it would be great.

What're the essential web languages for a new developer?

GilloD — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:50:55 -0800

I'd like to learn some web languages to help me take advantage of APIs and generally be more useful. It's been a crazy month and a half. After letting programming lapse entirely, both as hobby and profession, I've found myself seated in the role again. As the only person with even the vaguest idea of how programming languages work, I've been appointed the job of "Web development guy" at the small company I work for.

This has turned out to be wonderful. I'm kept busy, I get wide creative latitude and I genuinely enjoy the act of creating. And, if I do say so myself, I'm not too bad at it. I dove right in reading up on modern CSS, digging through the archives of Alistapart, challenging myself to implement complex solutions and generally learning by doing. I read a ton on best practices and worked hard to make my web code pass the "drop-dead" test- If I died today, I'm certain someone with only minimal knowledge could pick up my code tommorrow.

So this is great! But now I'm looking to try and be even more useful. I'd love to start learning some web-friendly languages so that I can flex my programming muscle. There are things no manner of CSS wizardry can accomplish that I'd like to be doing. If there's an API that I think could be helpful, I'd love to be able to take advantage of it.

But, like I said, I'm still rusty. So I'm looking for two things

-What are the vital web languages that a budding development dude should be familiar with.
-Where should he learn them?

Books, videos, web tutorials- I'm open to all of them. I'm just looking to solicit advice from folks who are in the trenches. I'm not looking to be able to brew my own social network or create a mega database, but I'd like to know enough to generate some dynamic content or employ some Java tricks when most pedestrian methods fail.

Is there a T-shirt fulfillment API?

racecar — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:17:46 -0800

Is there an automated way to have t-shirts printed and shipped? I'm writing a program that will allow users to have their custom designs printed (a la spreadshirt). Is there any API out there that I could give the image and address and payment, and have it take care of that fulfillment? My friends are already expressing an interest in buying some of these designs I'm talking about, but I don't have any scalable way to take their stuff (order info, design image, payment, shipment info), and instantly turn it into a fulfilled order. I don't want to be another Threadless or Zazzle. I just want my users to have this feature.

I know of APIs that just dispatch the user to one of these sites. I want to get a callback, and be able to know when users have ordered a shirt, so I can reflect the fact that they bought a shirt on the site. I'm offering users some extra functionality when they've bought a shirt.

Help me find a flash map.

Jeff_Larson — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:49:09 -0800

Are there any good, preferably open source flash maps available for mapping election data on the national level (with data for each state)? I've tried this, it's very pretty but doesn't seem to be what I need. But it seems to have problems with linking labels to state names, e.g. for the smaller states it must have an option to place labels outside of the state, and have the label's background color link to the states color. It also must be updateable in real-time, have the ability to drilldown into state data using popups or zooming, and look nice with loads of design customization options etc. Basically what I'm looking for is a thing like these:

NY Times - I know they had a deal with many-eyes for this, but i can't seem to get them on the horn to get something updateable.

WAPO - at the bottom.

CNN

Any leads?

Can I call an API on an ssl-encrypted page?

subpixel — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:20:36 -0800

Can an ssl-encrypted page call data from another site/domain via an API without compromising its encryption? I want to add a cool feature, but I don't want customers to encounter a warning that the page asking for their credit card info "contains both secure and non-secure items."

Google Earth: controlling from external application?

figTree — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:53:25 -0800

Is it possible to track things such as user movement and button clicking in Google Earth? I am wondering if anyone has come across mashups that do this. I know that if you have html or flash clips that you imbed into popups, that that could easily be tracked, but what about how the users are flying around? - users not directly using your part of the application par se, but Google's?

I am thinking that if this was to be possible, the whole Google earth could have to be controlled from an external application. Is this possible right now? Would this be something that adobe AIR would be capable of? Some other technology?

If this is not possible in GE due to API restrictions is it possible in Google Maps?

Which GPS is best for API access?

callingshotgun — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:26:10 -0800

I want to write some Location-based software (eventually on the mobile platform) and be able to test it on my laptop without faking GPS coordinates. What's a good, cheap GPS unit with a public API and/or some documentation/third party libraries for interacting with the device and retrieve information programmatically?