David Thomas Baker » Web » How does Flock access Facebook/Flickr friend list

When you sign into Facebook or Flickr whilst using Flock you will have access to a list of your friends via the People Bar.

Flock does this by calling the Facebook / Flicr API's

Here is an example request as seen in a wireshark dump:

GET /restserver.php?query=SELECT uid,name,pic_square,status,profile_update_time 
  FROM user WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = 123456789)&
  api_key=123456&session_key=12345&call_id=12345&method=facebook.fql.query&
  format=JSON&v=1.0&sig=12345
HTTP/1.1
Host: api.facebook.com

(flock facebook code: http://svn-mirror.flock.com/trac/flock/browser/trunk/mozilla/flock/base/services/ )

Flickr is accessed a similar way, via their rest interface - eg:

GET /services/rest/?method=blah.blah 
Host: www.flickr.com