Group APIs

With over 1.5 million groups, it’s no doubt that they are an important part of Flickr. Today, we’re releasing a few new ways to interact with groups using our API.

Group Membership

Cat meeting...

We are adding two new methods to manage group membership through the API.

flickr.groups.join to join a group. Before calling this method, check if the group has rules using flickr.groups.getInfo. The user needs to agree to the rules before being able to join the group. Pass the accept_rules argument if the user accepted the rules.

flickr.groups.leave to leave a group. The user’s photos can also be deleted when leaving the group by passing the delete_photos argument.

Group Discussions

shut UP WALTON

We are also opening up group discussions in the API. You can now fetch a list of discussion topics for a group using flickr.groups.discuss.topics.getList, with sticky topics first, then regular topics sorted from newest to oldest.

<rsp stat="ok">
    <topics group_id="46744914@N00" iconserver="1" iconfarm="1" name="Tell a story in 5 frames (Visual story telling)" members="12428" privacy="3" lang="en-us" ispoolmoderated="1" total="4621" page="1" per_page="2" pages="2310">
        <topic id="72157625038324579" subject="A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." author="53930889@N04" authorname="Smallportfolio_jm08" role="member" iconserver="5169" iconfarm="6" count_replies="8" can_edit="0" can_delete="0" can_reply="0" is_sticky="0" is_locked="" datecreate="1287070965" datelastpost="1336905518">
            <message> ... </message>
        </topic>
    </topics>
</rsp>

flickr.groups.discuss.topics.add to post a new topic to a group, passing a subject and the message content.

Additionally, you can fetch a list of replies for a topic using flickr.groups.discuss.replies.getList, which includes the information for the topic along with all the replies, sorted from oldest to newest.

<rsp stat="ok">
    <replies>
        <topic topic_id="72157625038324579" subject="A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." group_id="46744914@N00" iconserver="1" iconfarm="1" name="Tell a story in 5 frames (Visual story telling)" author="53930889@N04" authorname="Smallportfolio_jm08" role="member" author_iconserver="5169" author_iconfarm="6" can_edit="0" can_delete="0" can_reply="0" is_sticky="0" is_locked="" datecreate="1287070965" datelastpost="1336905518" total="8" page="1" per_page="3" pages="2">
            <message> ... </message>
        </topic>
        <reply id="72157625163054214" author="41380738@N05" authorname="BlueRidgeKitties" role="member" iconserver="2459" iconfarm="3" can_edit="0" can_delete="0" datecreate="1287071539" lastedit="0">
            <message> ... </message>
        </reply>
    </replies>
</rsp>

flickr.groups.discuss.replies.add to post a reply to a topic, passing the message content.

flickr.groups.discuss.replies.edit to edit a reply, passing the updated message.

flickr.groups.discuss.replies.delete to delete a reply.

You can only edit and delete replies when authorized as the owner of the reply. For now, it is not possible to edit or delete a topic through the API.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or just want to chat about these methods or anything else related to the API, please join the Flickr Developer mailing list.

Photos from fofurasfelinas and larissa_allen.