Flickr email checkbox ticker bookmarklet

One slightly annoying feature of Flickr is that there is no way of filtering your email. In particular I get a lot of group invites and emails telling me someone added me as a contact. Frequently there is no need for me to open these emails and to delete them means individual checkboxes have to be ticked. Here's a bookmarklet that you can drop into your bookmarks that does exactly that.

Within the javascript there is a "filter" variable that you can set to any text you want (at the moment it matches emails with the words 'Invite to' or 'You are' in the subject). Here's the javascript source:

javascript:(function(){
var anchors=document.getElementsByTagName('A'),
checkboxes=document.getElementsByTagName('INPUT'),
filter=/Invite to|You are/, i, j;
for(i=0;i<anchors.length;i++){
if(anchors[i].innerHTML.search(filter)>=0){
for(j=0;j<checkboxes.length;j++){
if(anchors[i].href.slice(-16)==checkboxes[j].name.slice(-16)){
checkboxes[j].checked=1
}
}
}
}
})()

iMacro script to swap between Flickr albums

The following handy iMacro script logs you from one Flickr account to another. I currently have six of these, one for each separate free Flickr album/account I have on the go (there's a maximum of 200 photos you can share for free in each account). All you have to do is install the iMacro plugin into your browser and save the following script not forgetting to add your login and password in the "User set variables" section.

Obviously if Flickr change their main site layout then this may break the script and it would have to be tweaked.

Script Starts

---

' Last Edit: 13 Nov 2008

' User set variables
' !VAR1 = your login ID, !VAR2 = your password
SET !VAR1 yourlogin@yahoo.com
SET !VAR2 password

' This script is intended to toggle you out of your
' current Flickr account and into one set by the
' variables above so you can easily swap between
' several albums

' Assumptions
' - A Sign Out link is on every Flickr page
' - You are currently logged into Flickr

' Main script
TAB T=1
FILTER TYPE=IMAGES STATUS=ON
SET !ERRORIGNORE YES
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Sign<SP>Out
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Sign<SP>in*
WAIT SECONDS=2
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Sign<SP>in<SP>as<SP>a*
SET !ERRORIGNORE NO
WAIT SECONDS=2
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:TEXT FORM=NAME:login_form ATTR=NAME:login CONTENT={{!VAR1}}
SET !ENCRYPTION NO
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:PASSWORD ATTR=ID:passwd CONTENT={{!VAR2}}
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT ATTR=VALUE:Sign<SP>In
FILTER TYPE=IMAGES STATUS=OFF
URL GOTO=http://www.flickr.com/activity
TAG POS=1 TYPE=SELECT FORM=* ATTR=ID:act-since CONTENT=%lastlogin

---

Script Ends

Latest changes:

1. I added the 2 second wait times as Sxipper (a password plugin) seemed to be causing 'focus' problems.
2. ErrorIgnore is used so that the script still works (though slower) if you have logged off but are still on the Flickr site.

Track Flickr group membership history using iMacro

User Guide	This script keeps a running log (every time you execute it), by updating a discussion message and/or saving a snapshot of group memberships. For the running log you have to create a message in each Flickr group you are an administrator for (or specifically declare), called "Member count". This log keeps a historical record of "date, membership total, total number of items". Before adding a new log entry it checks if the last entry (and the one before that) was less than a fortnight ago and updates it semi-intelligently.
Why?	I created this script as there is no easy alternative for keeping a history of membership for restricted groups in Flickr.
Notes	I'm an administrator for 9 Flickr groups and maintain membership logs in 4 other groups. Watching the macro chug along updating the logs is quite satisfying. It takes 10 seconds per group (loading 3 to 4 web pages each time and added waiting time, to avoid possible page freezes, composes most of that time) but this can increase up to three-fold depending on Flickr traffic. For a macro that I only need to run once every one or two weeks that doesn't seem too shabby.

[Source code now maintained at Sourceforge.net]

iMacro setup

iMacro installs itself with some example JavaScript files (.js) which are visible in the folders that iMacro shows you in Firefox. If you find the location of these folders on your hard disk (on the Mac these are under /<your_username>/iMacros/Macros/) and then save the script in this location with a ".js" extension you should be able to see the file when you refresh the iMacro folder list in Firefox. You should then be able to play the script from within iMacro (you have to already be logged in to your Flickr account and have created "Member count" discussion topics for groups you want to log). In the first instance I suggest you try the test test version which will run fully and show you the intended changes in the detailed change log but will not actually commit them. See wiki.imacros.net for further help.

Flickr iMacro script to invite all your Flickr friends to a group

There was no automatic way to invite all your friends to join a group so I knocked up this quick script to take you from any group main page to the invite page, extract your list of friends (and no other contacts) and then send off the invite. The invite only goes to friends not yet in the group and not previously invited so you will not be bugging them with unwanted spam.

Note that more than 500 friends may result in time-out errors waiting for Flickr to respond. In this situation you may be better off inviting a few hundred at a time by recording an iMacro selecting the first checkbox on the invite page, then generalize it by removing the ATTR=NAME: and copy that line 200 times but change POS=1 to POS=R1 so that the next checkbox relative to the cursor position is ticked each time. When you've trimmed to a more manageable number then this script can apply again.

[JavaScript source code START]

/*
Description:
JavaScript for iMacro to create a block invite for all your 
friends (but not family or other contacts) to join a Flickr group.
For more information see http://useroffline.blogspot.com

Assumptions:
- You have iMacro installed.
- You have your group's main page currently displayed.

Why:
There is no block invite facility built into Flickr.
*/

// Get friends list
var friendArr=new Array();
iimPlay("CODE:\
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Invite\n\
TAG POS=1 TYPE=A ATTR=TXT:Choose<SP>from<SP>your<SP>contacts?\n\
TAG POS=5 TYPE=TR EXTRACT=HTM\
");
// Tidy up extracted data
friendArr=iimGetLastExtract(1).split("name=\"");
friendArr.splice(0,1);
for(i in friendArr){
friendArr[i]=friendArr[i].split("\"")[0];
friendArr[i]="TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:CHECKBOX ATTR=NAME:"+friendArr[i]+" CONTENT=YES";
}
iimPlay("CODE:"+
"' Total no. of friends = "+friendArr.length+"\n"+
friendArr.join("\n"));
// Send the message
iimPlay("CODE:\
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT ATTR=NAME:Submit&&VALUE:PREVIEW*\n\
TAG POS=1 TYPE=INPUT:SUBMIT ATTR=NAME:done_send&&VALUE:SEND*\
");

[JavaScript source code END]