Flickr Authentication API Documentation Bug
In the Flickr authentication API documentation regarding their Authentication Specification, the example in section 9.2 seems to have an invalid value.
They provide the following:
- API Key: 987654321
- Parameters: method=flickr.auth.getFrob
- Secret: foobarbaz
According to section 8, this should result in taking the md5sum of:
foobarbazapi_key987654321methodflickr.auth.getFrob
Which is 91216d07a9e945a8e2bf2b2660e7ba86 . Hoewever, the md5sum used in the api_sig parameter in the example is 5f3870be274f6c49b3e31a0c6728957f. (I’ve tried several different combinations, and been unable to figure out what this value might be based on.)
This yws-flickr post also confirms that the documentation appears to be incorrect.
I couldn’t find the appropriate place to put this given a short search, so I’m publishing it here in hopes that it will remind me to inform someone who might be able to fix it. (There are 5 authors listed on the spec: Emailing all five of them feels like overkill, especially since I’m pretty sure that not all of them still actively work on flickr.) If you know anyone who might be involved, feel free to pass it on…