Linux Shell Flickr Batch Downloader Script

For a while I've been meaning to write a Linux Flickr downloader, but I've been putting it off and putting it off as I thought it wouldn't be easy. But I hadn't thought about using curl and the Flickr API directly and, rather embarrassingly, happened upon a script a few lines long to do just that.

curl "###FlickrAPIURL###" | awk '/id=/ {print "http://farm"$6".static.flickr.com/"$5"/"$2"_"$4".jpg" }' | sed '~s/\(farm=\|server=\|secret=\|id=\|"\)//g' > p
wget -i p

There are plenty of options for FlickrAPIURL, and Flickr provides a very helpful URL builder, for search for example.

An improved script:

#!/bin/sh

# As is this script takes comma separated tags as argument one and downloads all matching
# images from a single Flickr user, probably you

# To get your API Key and Secret create a Flickr App at:
# http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/apply/

APIKey='xxx'
Secret='yyy'

# To get your token you can manually follow the desktop instructions:
# http://www.flickr.com/services/api/auth.howto.desktop.html
# If you do not want/need to sign your call you can remove the MD5ing and api_sig

Token='zzz'

# Note that *all* parameters in URI must be in alphabetical order, so this may not work
# for your method/parameters as is

Method='flickr.photos.search'
Params="tags=$1&user_id=YourUserID"

# Image size: _s small square, _t thumbnail, _m small, none medium, _b large, _o original
Size=""

(
IFS='\
'
Page=1
Pages=1
while [ $Page -le $Pages ]
do
        URI="api_key=$APIKey&auth_token=$Token&method=$Method&page=$Page&per_page=2&$Params"
        MD5URI=$(echo $URI | sed 's/[&=]//g')
        MD5=$(echo -n $Secret$MD5URI | md5sum | sed s/\ \ -//)

        for f in $(curl "http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?$URI&api_sig=$MD5")
        do
                TempPages=$(echo $f | awk '/<photos/ {print $3}')
                if [ $TempPages ]
                then   
                        Pages=$(echo $TempPages | sed '~s/\(pages=\|"\)//g')
                fi
                URL=$(echo $f | awk '/id=/ {print "http://farm"$6".static.flickr.com/"$5"/"$2"_"$4}')
                if [ $URL ]
                then   
                        URL=$(echo $URL | sed '~s/\(farm=\|server=\|secret=\|id=\|"\)//g')$Size".jpg"
                        wget $URL
                fi
        done
        Page=$(($Page + 1))
done
)

UPDATE: Note that if you want to download original sizes you must request the "originalsecret" by adding extra=original_format to the API URL and use that instead of secret. The awk line needs updating to do this, add -F '"' to separate on double quotes.