Flickr Services

User Authentication

Many methods require the user to be logged in. At present there is only one way to accomplish this.

Authentication API

Users should be authenticated using the Authentication API. The auth_token and api_sig parameters should then be passed along with each request. For more details, please read the Auth API Spec.

There are step-by-step how-to's to guide you through the setup and development procedure for each of the authentication modes:

• Web Application How-To
• Desktop Application How-To
• Mobile Application How-To

Note that these are just our suggestions which will work in most cases. There may be application-specific reasons you'd want to use, say, the desktop application style of authentication for a web based app or the mobile style of authentication for a command-line app, etc. If in doubt, check them all out.

Commandline applications will probably want to use the mobile authentication mode.