Flickr Geo queries not returning any data - api

I cannot get the Flickr API to return any data for lat/lon queries.
view-source:http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&media=photo&api_key=KEY_HERE&has_geo=1&extras=geo&bbox=0,0,180,90
This should return something, anything. Doesn't work if I use lat/lng either. I can get some photos returned if I lookup a place_id first and then use that in the query, except then all the photos returned are from anywhere and not the place id
Eg,
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&media=photo&api_key=KEY_HERE&placeId=8iTLPoGcB5yNDA19yw
I deleted out my key obviously, replace with yours to test.
Any help appreciated, I am going mad over this.

I believe that the Flickr API won't return any results if you don't put additional search terms in your query. If I recall from the documentation, this is treated as an unbounded search. Here is a quote from the documentation:
Geo queries require some sort of limiting agent in order to prevent the database from crying. This is basically like the check against "parameterless searches" for queries without a geo component.
A tag, for instance, is considered a limiting agent as are user defined min_date_taken and min_date_upload parameters — If no limiting factor is passed we return only photos added in the last 12 hours (though we may extend the limit in the future).
My app uses the same kind of geo searching so what I do is put in an additional search term of the minimum date taken, like so:
http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.photos.search&media=photo&api_key=KEY_HERE&has_geo=1&extras=geo&bbox=0,0,180,90&min_taken_date=2005-01-01 00:00:00
Oh, and don't forget to sign your request and fill in the api_sig field. My experience is that the geo based searches don't behave consistently unless you attach your api_key and sign your search. For example, I would sometimes get search results and then later with the same search get no images when I didn't sign my query.

Related

How to specify minimum checkins using Foursquare API?

I'm new to all this, but I was wanting to know how I can view popular Foursquare venues by using a longitude and latitude but also narrowing the search by specifying the exact amount of checkins at a place and also providing the radius.
I've figured out how to do some of the URL but don't know what to type exactly to specify the minimum amount of checkins.
"https://api.foursquare.com/v2/venues/search/?ll= 42.973423,-83.738894&radius=200"
That is what my URL is looking like, now I need help figuring out the last bit of information.
It's not possible to define a minimum number of checkins as a search parameter for the /v2/venues/search endpoint.
The response of /v2/venues/search request contains a stats field with a checkinsCount property. This would allow you to filter the results based on a checkinsCount threshold.

Sorting the response from the Foursquare Places API re:two word name?

We are trying to query the Foursquare api to query for a two word name:
Cava Grill in Gaithersburg, MD
We are trying this via:
https://api.foursquare.com/v2/venues/search?intent=checkin&query=cava%20grill&near=gaithersburg,%20md&limit=1&oauth_token=SEB14NBLGO4HMFTOXQX0JZTSVGM41ENNKE0X1RXHCI5XP3P5&v=20150420
(don't worry ... this is the public API key from the FS page)
Two odd behaviors:
Even though we are explicitly searching for the Cava Grill in Gaithersburg, MD ... the Bethesda, MD one comes up first in the results (odd, why??)
Chipotle Mexican Grill shows up in this result set ... we suppose because of the word "Grill"
So ...
a. anyone know why the Bethesda one would show up higher in the result set? (Should we just narrow the radius tighter?)
b. anyone know if we can look for the "entire query" vs. each word in the query?
Results are queried and sorted differently based on your intent. If you're looking for a specific venue, I suggest changing your intent from checkin to match. Browse may also be a good choice depending on future search params
Here's the nutshell on the intents:
intent=checkin returns a list of venues where the user is most likely is located
intent=browse returns a list of most relevant venues for a requested region, not biased by distance from a central point.
intent=match returns a single result that, with high confidence, is the corresponding foursquare venue for the query-based request
I hope this helps

Large results set from Oracle SELECT

I have a simple, pasted below, statement called against an Oracle database. This result set contains names of businesses but it has 24,000 results and these are displayed in a drop down list.
I am looking for ideas on ways to reduce the result set to speed up the data returned to the user interface, maybe something like Google's search or a completely different idea. I am open to whatever thoughts and any direction is welcome.
SELECT BusinessName FROM MyTable ORDER BY BusinessName;
Idea:
SELECT BusinessName FROM MyTable WHERE BusinessName LIKE "A%;
I'm know all about how LIKE clauses are not wise to use but like I said this is a LARGE result set. Maybe something along the lines of a BINARY search?
The last query can perform horribly. String comparisons inside the database can be very slow, and depending on the number of "hits" it can be a huge drag on performance. If that doesn't concern you that's fine. This is especially true if the Company data isn't normalized into it's own db table.
As long as the user knows the company he's looking up, then I would identify an existing JavaScript component in some popular JavaScript library that provides a search text field with a dynamic dropdown that shows matching results would be an effective mechanism. But you might want to use '%A%', if they might look for part of a name. For example, If I'm looking for IBM Rational, LLC. do I want it to show up in results when I search for "Rational"?
Either way, watch your performance and if it makes sense cache that data in the company look up service that sits on the server in front of the DB. Also, make sure you don't respond to every keystroke, but have a timeout 500ms or so, to allow the user to type in multiple chars before going to the server and searching. Also, I would NOT recommend bringing all of the company names to the client. We're always looking to reduce the size and frequency of traversals to the server from the browser page. Waiting for 24k company names to come down to the client when the form loads (or even behind the scenes) when shorter quicker very specific queries will perform sufficiently well seems more efficient to me. Again, test it and identify the performance characteristics that fit your use case best.
These are techniques I've used on projects with large data, like searching for a user from a base of 100,000+ users. Our code was a custom Dojo widget (dijit), I 'm not seeing how to do it directly with the dijit code, but jQuery UI provides the autocomplete widget.
Also use limit on this query with a text field so that the drop down only provides a subset of all the matches, forcing the user to further refine the query.
SELECT BusinessName FROM MyTable ORDER BY BusinessName LIMIT 10

CategoryId in venues search not working correctly

In foursquare Api documentation for "Search venues" https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/venues/search it states
"categoryId - A comma separated list of categories to limit results to. This is an experimental feature and subject to change or may be unavailable. If you specify categoryId you may also specify a radius. If specifying a top-level category, all sub-categories will also match the query."
Realise its supposed to be experimental, but when I provide Food category i.e. 4d4b7105d754a06374d81259, it only returns a few local results, the rest are miles away. However if I execute same search on website sing Food category, it returns correctly lots of results, assuming its the last bit "If specifying a top-level category, all sub-categories will also match the query" is not working , i.e. its not searching sub-categories ?
Any fix work around for this ?
Thanks,
Neil Pepper
You're making a /venues/search request with its default intent of intent=checkin. This returns a filter on nearby results, heavily biased by distance since it's trying to guess where the user might be checking in.
Foursquare Explore uses the /venues/explore endpoint and attempts to return recommended results for a query. If you want to get the sorts of results you get in that tool, call /venues/explore?section=food

Youtube API problem - when searching for playlists, start-index does not work past 100

I have been trying to get the full list of playlists matching a certain keyword. I have discovered however that using start-index past 100 brings the same set of results as using start-index=1. It does not matter what the max-results parameter is - still the same results. The total results returned however is way above 100, thus it cannot be that the query returned only 100 results.
What might the problem be? Is it a quota of some sort or any other authentication restriction?
As an example - the queries bring the same result set, whether you use start-index=1, or start-index=101, or start-index = 201 etc:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/playlists/snippets?q=%22Jan+Smit+Laura%22&max-results=50&start-index=1&v=2
Any idea will be much appreciated!
Regards
Christo
I made an interface for my site, and the way I avoided this problem is to do a query for a large number, then store the results. Let your web page then break up the results and present them however is needed.
For example, if someone wants to do a search of over 100 videos, do the search and collect the results, but only present them with the first group, say 10. Then when the person wants to see the next ten, you get them from the list you stored, rather than doing a new query.
Not only does this make paging faster, but it cuts down on the constant queries to the YouTube database.
Hope this makes sense and helps.