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excluding a tag

wolfcat_aus PRO 12:41am, 24 November 2010
I want to exclude a tag, eg. - brisbane

but even using the API tools, when I include the tags, "garden,-brisbane"

on the page

www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.search.html

when adding a user ID, it still doesn't return what I am after, I get garden and brisbane, despite the documentation stating "You can exclude results that match a term by prepending it with a - character."

even using


$.getJSON("https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?jsoncallback=?",
{
ids : "39672088@N07,7519521@N06",
tags: "garden,-brisbane",
tagmode: "any",
format: "json",
},
function(data) {
$.each(data.items, function(i,item){
$("").attr("src", item.media.m).appendTo("#images");
if ( i == 10 ) return false;
});
});

where if I want to remove a single photo that is "brisbane", the - tag does not work.
myobis 7 years ago
Just a feeling : did you try with tag_mode='all' ?
indeed, with 'any', I understand your "garden,-brisbane" query as
pictures having "garden" or not having "brisbane".
wolfcat_aus PRO 7 years ago
yes, I tried that

doing that returns the one image I am trying to remove :-)

the - seems to be being ignored completely
myobis Posted 7 years ago. Edited by myobis (member) 7 years ago
I did a few tests which confirm what you say..
I could not make the "excluding this tag" feature work..

This query works (with tag exclusion) but this is not the API.
www.flickr.com/search/?q=myobis+-spain&m=tags&ss=...

Remains for you the possibility to filter the unwanted results out of the flickr response (adding "&extras=tags" to your search query will return the photo tags).
Alesa Dam PRO 7 years ago
you may want to report this on the developers list: tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/yws-flickr/
visp PRO 7 years ago
(Cross-posting this from the mailing list, just in case anyone encounters the same problem and finds this thread)

There appears to be an (undocumented?) tag_mode value 'bool', which makes flickr.photos.search respect the '-' prefixing to exclude a tag, but otherwise behaves like the 'all' option.
This is also what the Organizr uses (and it supports tag negation).
Alesa Dam PRO 7 years ago
even with tag_mode=bool, the flickr.photos.search call does not respect the '-' prefixing using only one tag :(
you need at least one non-excluded tag, unfortunately, for tag exclusion to work.
whatsthatpicture PRO 6 years ago
Damn, this has just explained the problem I am having. I wonder why you can't exclude based on one tag?

Can anyone think of a workaround that would mean I could in effect return all images and then exclude those that match one value? I guess I'm going to have to do it by fetching all images and then excluding them programatically based on a match, but that doesn't feel like either an efficient use of the API, or of the code using it.
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