What can be done with the API? - a hypothetical question

erikheerlein

Is it possible to create a web site which draws upon several different SmugMug accounts to present photographs from those accounts with the option to buy prints and presenting this all from one web site with a unified interface?

Think of it as an online version of what galleries do by providing a one stop place to come and view and buy artwork from the artists that the gallery represents. Is it possible to create a "greatpics.com" site which showcased work by several photographers under one site?

I'm thinking each photographer would have their own SmugMug account so they could have control over their own images and pricing, but that same work in their SmugMug accounts could also be shown and purchased at "greatpics.com". The e-commerce aspect would be handled by SmugMug like it currently is, it's just the front end would be a custom interface showcasing work by several photographers.

Is this even possible?

Thank you for your time.

Micah Wittman

This is a great question, erikheerlein. I have more or less wondered about this too.

It's particularly relevant to my SmugScope project (http://smugscope.com/beta ), which doesn't currently join multiple accounts into one view, but it's not a big leap to code it to do so.

Any discussion on this by the SmugMug community is of great interest to me.

erikheerlein

So you're saying that technically speaking, on the surface, there does not appear to be any reason why it couldn't be done. Is that correct?

I have not used the API so I am not familiar with what functionality is available from SmugMug or what information you can and cannot access.

I am assuming that to get information from multiple accounts would require making several separate calls to the server. My concern at that point is how fast would that be and would load time become an issue as the number of photographers were increased.

My second concern would be around how would you reconcile the checkout process if the user wanted to purchase prints from several different photographers at one time. How could the checkout be handled so that each photographer's account was properly credited with the user only having to go through the checkout process once?

Currently, I can go through the "Popular Photo" section on SmugMug and buy prints from two different photographers and checkout in one process so SmugMug has developed this capability on their own site but is this functionality reproducible using the API?

That's what I'm trying to get a sense of.

Micah Wittman

erikheerlein,

From what I see in the API documentation, there are no ecommerce methods, so a service using the public API would not be, at this point, able to process photo purchases (neither one nor multiple) against a SmugMug account through the smugmug purchase system.

Maybe some SmugMug staff can chime in to confirm this and perhaps comment on any future plans in this regard.

Good chatting with you.


Micah

devbobo

Hey Guys,

There will be some API methods for ordering prints etc at some point. Hopefully during the course of this year, I have previously done some work for this, but the majority needs to be rewritten with changes we made for supporting Bay Photo.

Cheers,

David

erikheerlein

Thanks for the info guys. I think I will open a pro account and just use the upload by email feature for now so a couple photographers can upload to one account.

Also, is it possible to use the API for uploading pics? I mean, could I create an admin area on my end where different photographers upload their pics to my server and specify gallery, price, etc. and then my admin would take that info and the pics and then upload them to smugmug and assign prices, keywords, categories and the like?