Tumblr API
The Tumblr API is great. It’s really straightforward and, if you hadn’t noticed, has totally roused my creative juices with what’s possible. What’s possible is creating a mini-site (or projectlette, as I often call them) in just a few hours.
From time to time, though, I have an idea that requires me to hack around a little bit to get my hands on the data I’m looking for. That’s probably one of my favorite things in the world: figuring out something that almost seems impossible at first. The challenge is enthralling, failure is disappointing, but success is ultimately quite rewarding.
So this evening I figured out a way to pull the avatar for any Tumblr user based on their username (or one of their URLs). It’s not the way, it’s not a supported way, and it’s not even a particularly robust way… but it works… most of the time. Good enough for me, for now.
This is all leading up to a new site I’m working on that will be highly integrated with Tumblr, but which won’t actually run on Tumblr. It’ll have a Tumblr component of course, since being on the dashboard is an essential key to getting noticed — but most of the site will be something else entirely.
Assuming this is true, it sounds like 500 puppies will die before the week is out.
