Thursday, January 15, 2009

ImageShack Uploader

Sometimes I use ImageShack server to share my photos with friends or for posting images on forums. And one day, on ProgrammableWeb I found APIs for this service and decided to create AIR application for uploading images.

In the process of the development I found that Adobe's File or FileReference classes does not allow send files with custom content type and ImageShack backend do not accept Adobe's default content type. I investigated this issue and realized that currently it is impossible to send custom content type. So I decided to use as3httpclientlib library.
Using this library I could specify content type required for uploading (like image/jpeg, image/png) and send file using multipart POST request.
Each time, when image was successfully uploaded, I save links in the shared objects. So, user can manage all uploaded images (links to original images and thumbnails).
ImageShack upload method accepts parameters which allows resize images on backend side. But there I found another problem. This time it was problem on the backend. When I send parameters required for resizing, server does not respond. I decided to install ImageShack's firefox plugin and trace request to server. Unfortunately, server did not respond as well. So in the next version I am going to resize image using actionscript and send already resized image to the server.
Also, I have one issue in my todo list to implement, it is auto update for my air application.

If you are interested in such kind of application, you can download it here.

4 comments:

  1. I downloaded this a few days ago and grew to really love it. Last night, without any given reason, it ceased to function. I uninstalled it and downloaded again. Doesn't help. When I click on it to start up, NOTHING happens. It was probably too good to be true.

    Any ideas?

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  2. hm, very strange. Which version did you downloaded?
    Try to check for updates.

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  3. It's fine now. It was still running when I opened the task manager but wasn't visible. It happened a few more times but not anymore now.

    Another question: [bear in mind, I'm just a simple user of all this stuff] All these images that I upload to Imageshack via this uploader ... the History file will only be accessible as long as this computer is working, right? Is there any other way I would be able to find them in Imageshack if something were to happen to this computer?

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  4. Actually not. All uploaded images are stored in cookies and will be accessible even after you restart your computer. Another problem is that you don't have access to your uploaded image from another computer. I didn't implement such feature because Image Shack service targeted to just upload image, share it on blogs or forums, not to collect it in one place.

    Thanks for using my app.

    ReplyDelete