Downloading Flickr Images Using REST Method

Last week, I stumbled upon a task where I needed to download images from Flickr. I was instructed not to use serialised PHP output formats. They preferred to use REST(Representational State Transfer). I admittedly say that the task was quite new in my case so I had to study how to do it. I didn't even know how to perform the donwloading of these images and then generate the list to my page. Gladly, uniezuke, also a  deviantcoder member, guided me on how to do it.

Here's a snippet of what I did. I am going to post it here so others may use it as well.

Flickr Search Result
<?php	

	//THESE WILL DETERMINE AND SET OUR PAGE NUMBER
	if (empty($_REQUEST['n'])) 
		$pagenum = 1;
	else 
		$pagenum = $_REQUEST['n'];
	
	//THIS IS THE NUMBER OF IMAGES THAT WE WANT TO BE SHOWN PER PAGE
	$photos = 15;
	
	
	//NOW LET'S CALL OUR URL WHERE WE WILL DOWNLOAD OUR LIST OF IMAGES
	//HERE'S A SAMPLE URL 
	
	$url = "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/";
	//DOWNLOAD FROM FLICKR USING REST METHOD
	
	$url .= "?method=flickr.photos.search";
	//THE API METHOD THAT WE WILL BE USING
	
	$url .= "&text=fish";
	//ASSUMING WE ARE DOWNLOADING IMAGES RELATED TO THE WORD 'FISH'
	
	$url .= "&api_key=5a0bc8881138615f3e5a6e47dff6b596";
	//YOUR API KEY. 
	//YOU NEED TO GET THIS BEFORE YOU CAN USE FLICKR API
	//WE HAVE PROVIDED AN INVALID KEY HERE INTENTIONALLY.
	
	
	//NOW LET'S LOAD OUR XML FILE USING OUR URL AND PAGE NUMBER ABOVE
	$xml = simplexml_load_file($url."&per_page=$photos&page=$pagenum");
	
	//THIS WILL TELL THE TOTAL IMAGES DOWNLOADED
	$total = $xml->photos['total'];
	
	// NOW LET'S DO OUR PAGINATION
	$pages = $total % $photos;
	$pages = ($total + $photos - $pages) / $photos;
	
	if (($pagenum * $photos) > $total) 
		$to = $total % $photos;
	else 
		$to = $photos; 
	
	// THIS IS THE PART WHERE WE WILL BE PRINTING OUR DOWNLOADED IMAGES
	// 15 IMAGES PER PAGE (SINCE WE HAVE OUR PAGINATION)
	for ($k = 0; $k<$to; $k++) {
		echo '<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/'.$xml->photos->photo[$k]['owner'].'/'.$xml->photos->photo[$k]['id'].'" target="_blank">';
			echo '<img src="';
				echo "http://static.flickr.com/";
				echo $xml->photos->photo[$k]['server'];
				echo "/";
				echo $xml->photos->photo[$k]['id'];
				echo "_";
				echo $xml->photos->photo[$k]['secret'];
				echo "_m.jpg";
				echo '" alt="'.$xml->photos->photo[$k]['title'].'" border="0">';
			echo '</a></p>';
		echo '<p><b>' . $xml->photos->photo[$k]['title'] . '</b></p>';
	}

	
	if ($total == 0)
		// WE WILL TELL THE USER IS NO RESULT WAS FOUND
		echo '
Search did not found any image. Please check your inputs.
';
	else 
	{
		// PRINTING PAGE NAVI
		if ($total > 15) {
			$back = (empty($_REQUEST['n']) or $_REQUEST['n']==1) ? 1 : $pagenum - 1;
			$next = ($pagenum == $pages) ? $pagenum : $pagenum + 1;
			echo ''.BACK.'';
			echo ''.NEXT.'';
		}
	}
?>

Please note that the above code is just a part of a working application. I just want to share how to download images from Flickr using REST method.