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Flickr Link Preview

By Erik R. — Last update Dec 28, 2008 — Installed 271 times.

Script Summary:
Provides a thumbnail preview of text links to Flickr photos.

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In my research into this goal, I discovered two reasons why my goal is unattainable using pure javascript:

Due to very reasonable security restrictions on AJAX calls, a script running on this page, for example, cannot communicate with Flickr via an XMLHttpRequest.
Even if I could get around #1, I would have to include my personal Flickr API key and secret in plain text in the javascript file. This is not only a bad idea, but against Flickr's Terms of Service.

The result is that the script must use a cross-site scripting technique to send information to a PHP program running on a server I host, which sends the request to Flickr and returns the remaining part of the script that knows what to do with the information from Flickr.

Screencast

A screencast demonstrating this script in action is available on Flickr, YouTube, Metacafe, Google, Break, Blip.tv, Imeem and Sclipo.