flickr problem?

[phated]

From an old email by Nate (posting for posterity):

I was looking deeper into why we get incorrect results with our web site photos from flickr.com

Occasionally we get a photo that is "stuck" on the list, or on the top of the list, and it inhibits other more recent photos with the "publish" tag from getting on the web page.

(Jacob was experiencing this long before I started adding "publish" tags and captions.)

Sometimes the only way to fix it is to delete the stuck photo.

Sometimes if I delete the "publish" tag, the correct photo will appear if I immediately refresh the web page, but a second refresh 30 seconds later has reverted to the incorrect photo again.

I'm no good at the debugger tools, but think I've extracted the correct call to the flickr site.

I only changed the response format to XML result since it was easier to read in my browser (instead of JSON).

call from our web site:

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=bec64c9c0f28889dc6e0c5ef7be3511f&user_id=60827818%40N07&tags=publish&format=rest

stripped down call based on "app garden" api example:

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=496d88aed61305c4b7416d85c37406c3&user_id=60827818%40N07&tags=publish&format=rest

So the above two links give same results of 49 photos with the same incorrect one at the top of: "Strange box, weird writing, lots of knobs and buttons..."
That "Strange box..." photo should NOT be there since the "publish" tag was removed from it.

full "app garden" call:

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&api_key=496d88aed61305c4b7416d85c37406c3&user_id=60827818%40N07&tags=publish&format=rest&auth_token=72157635008511119-4413cafd33301344&api_sig=892b67dde4fefb6d9e99d903ac9ae65a

Now this is the full URL from the app garden with the auth_token and api_sig at the end (that the app garden supplied)

This gives a different result list of 51 photos. And the offending one ("Strange box...") is correctly not there. I think this is the correct response. And seems to update in a timely fashion.

So, weird as it might seem, it appears that making the same call without the auth_token and api_sig gives an incorrect result.

It appears that our call at the HeatSync Labs web page is of the same format (no auth_token or api_sig) so this might be a clue to the slightly wrong results.

I can't find a coherent explanation from flickr of the purpose of the auth_token and api_sig since I would think that the api_key would be sufficient.

app garden:

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/explore/flickr.photos.search