Picasa - Python

Picasa is an image organizer and image viewer for organizing and editing digital photos, plus an integrated photo-sharing website. It was owned by Google and was discontinued on March 15th, 2016.

However, the Picasa API is still available for use. The Picasa API allows developers to access and manipulate user photo albums and images stored in Google Photos. The API is based on HTTP requests and is generally used by Python developers.

Getting Started

To use the Picasa API in Python, you need to obtain an API key. You can obtain an API key by visiting the following link: https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol#Authentication.

Once you have your API key, you can start using the Picasa API in Python. To do this, you'll need to install the gdata package:

pip install gdata

Authenticating the API

To authenticate the Picasa API, you must make an HTTP request with your API key. Here's an example of how to do it:

import gdata.photos.service

# create a client object
client = gdata.photos.service.PhotosService()

# authenticate with your API key
client.ClientLogin(email='YOUR_EMAIL', password='YOUR_PASSWORD', source='YOUR_APP_NAME', source='YOUR_APP_NAME', service='lh2', sid=None, captcha_token=None, captcha_response=None)

Retrieving Photos and Albums

To retrieve photos and albums from Picasa using Python, you'll need to use the gdata library. Here's an example:

import gdata.photos.service

# create a client object
client = gdata.photos.service.PhotosService()

# authenticate with your API key
client.ClientLogin(email='YOUR_EMAIL', password='YOUR_PASSWORD', source='YOUR_APP_NAME', source='YOUR_APP_NAME', service='lh2', sid=None, captcha_token=None, captcha_response=None)

# get a list of albums
albums = client.GetUserFeed()

for album in albums.entry:
    photos = client.GetFeed('/data/feed/api/user/{0}/albumid/{1}?kind=photo'.format(album.gphoto_user, album.gphoto_id))
    
    for photo in photos.entry:
        print 'Photo title:', photo.title.text
        print 'Photo URL:', photo.content.src

Conclusion

In summary, the Picasa API allows Python developers to access and manipulate user photo albums and images stored in Google Photos. The API is based on HTTP requests and is generally used by Python developers. With this knowledge, you can create powerful applications that can interact with Picasa and Google Photos.