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a stroke of luck

Has your Flash/ Flickr app stopped working?

Update

For the latest up to date information about Flashr please check out the new Flashr microsite

It was announced on the flickr mailing list last week that flickr.com were making some changes to how their API works. Those changes have completed today with the removal of the crossdomain.xml file from flickr.com.

What does that mean for me?

If you wrote a flash application that used the Flickr API then you will need to make a small change to it and recompile it. If you don’t do this then your swf will not be allowed to connect to flickr.com and query the API and so won’t work.

Why did they change it?

Not just to annoy all flash developers! Basically, the way the API was previously set up, any flash file could request any data from flickr.com (not just via the API). So it would be potentially possible for someone to craft an “evil” swf which could connect to flickr.com. If the viewer’s browser was logged in to flickr.com then this evil swf could potentially do evil stuff like deleting their photos.

How can I fix my app?

Luckily, the fix is very simple. If you are using Flashr you can just apply the changes in this changeset.

The change you have to make will depend on whether you are using version 0.4 or 0.5 of Flashr and should be self explanatory. Basically you are just telling Flashr to connect to http://api.flickr.com/ instead of http://www.flickr.com/.

It only took me a little while to update Selfportratir, my interestingness experiments and my colourfields experiment. Mario and Doug have both posted about this too and have updated their various experiments.

If you’ve written any Flash applications that connect to flickr please check they are still working or apply the fix, if you come across any other sites where Flash is meant to be connecting to flickr and you just see a blank screen then please let their makers know.

I’m not going to update some of my older experiments and examples because version 0.5 of Flashr is going to be released very soon along with a shiny new microsite and I will put new versions of everything up there.

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