Testers Wanted

I've got a new version of Postr ready for release, but would like someone else to test it before I release it as quite a lot of the important code has been, well, rewritten.

So, to any potential testers: using Bazaar clone this repository, install Twisted (python-twisted-core on Debian/Ubuntu), delete ~/.flickr/c53cebd15ed936073134cec858036f1d/auth.xml (the cached authentication tokens) and try and upload a photo. If anyone gives it a go please leave comments or email me, so I can fix any bugs.

Thanks!

21:00 Sunday, 07 Jan 2007 [#] [computers/postr] (2 comments)

Asynchronous Flickr Library, version 0.1

I'm finally releasing version 0.1 of my Flickr library, flickrpc. The name is actually misleading, and I should change it for 1.0, as the class name is flickrest and the transport protocol is HTTP/REST, not XML-RPC (as was the original plan, thus the name). This library is written in Python and uses Twisted.

Why another Flickr library?

Because Postr required it. All of the existing libraries that I know of are blocking (I used to use Beej's flickrapi, which was based upon Michele Campeotto's flickrclient), which makes using them in GUI applications painful. Early versions of Postr used threads so that uploading could be done in the background without blocking the UI, but as Postr makes more calls to Flickr whilst being used interactively these threads will become a maintaince nightmare. By using Twisted all of the network operations are handled in the main loop, and I can write callback-based network code just like I write callback-based UI code.

Why Twisted?

Because it works, and is popular. If someone has a HTTP client library that integrated into the GLib mainloop and will expose callbacks when operations complete, please tell me. I love what Twisted gives me, but at the end of the day if there is a simplier solution, I'll consider it.

Sounds excellent! Where can I get it?

There is a tarball of 0.1 available here: flickrpc-0.1.tar.gz. If you want to track the latest development, or contribute patches, there is also a Bazaar archive.

19:30 Sunday, 07 Jan 2007 [#] [computers/postr] (0 comments)