As of May 2016, as many of you know, Google stopped supporting Picasa; and since August 2016, most of the functionality of Picasa was taken down, and pages started to get redirected to Google Photos instead. Google claims that ‘old APIs’ are still supported, and that’s true to a degree, but things simply got much, much harder to fix.
In particular, Shashin requires a ‘page’ from which it can extract an RSS feed. The author, Mike Toppa, has not given us an alternative to load the images. While Google somehow redirected people to a page where there was an RSS feed, Shashin would cleverly get it, and would continue to work. Unfortunately, at this moment, there seems to be no way to generate a page which continues to have the embedded RSS feeds on it. I actually checked with one Google dev (a personal friend of mine) and this was deliberate: they were worried about some users who clicked on the ‘wrong’ links and basically allowed anyone to get the RSS feed — which was not what they intended at all! So, to refrain stupid users to make mistakes, they simply removed that functionality from Google Photos.
Now, because so many plugins and apps and whatnot rely upon those RSS feeds still working, Google did not change the actual calls. In fact, I even managed to find two different RSS feeds from the same user/album combination; they present data in a slightly different way, and are basically two different ‘generations’ of code development. Both still work fine.
The problem, of course, is to figure out how to construct the RSS feed, and, secondly, get Shashin to work with a RSS feed directly, instead of relying on a page to extract the feed.
1. Figuring out the RSS feed
Picasa and Google Photos both use the notion of user IDs and album IDs, and, optionally, an authentication key for private albums. Unfortunately (or deliberately?) Google changed all the IDs when moving from Picasa to Google Photos.
You can try to assemble a valid RSS feed using several solutions. One is described here: https://41kzone.blogspot.pt/2013/05/getting-media-rss-feed-from-google.html — although the article is three years old, the constructed RSS URLs do still work. Another way is to follow the instructions on this WordPress support thread — https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/how-to-use-plugin-after-migration-to-google-photos/ While the original instructions don’t seem to be working any more, the suggestion made in the comments by @cra1gster will still work.
However, there might be a catch with albums with authkeys; depending on when they were uploaded, the way Google handles them (from within the Google pages) has changed — new authkeys, what used to be ‘visible with link’ now requires previous authentication and is only shared with ‘friends’ (I assume this means someone in your Google Circle or something similar). Old things still work, though, and they work very well.
Enter Casper Baghuis wonderful world of the RSSerator. Explained here on his blog post, the RSSerator is an application which allows you to log in to Google with your account (therefore using the ‘new’ method of authentication) but view all your ‘old’ Picasa albums, and, for each of them, you get not only the essential data (user ID, album ID, authkey) and a link to a well-formed RSS URL, but, as a nice bonus (and a vital one!), you can also set the visibility directly from this page — instantly, at a click of the mouse! It’s really amazing, and I can only wish that Casper Baghuis is able to maintain that site up for as long as possible!
2. Making Shashin recognise Picasa RSS feeds
Unfortunately, as said, to get Shashin to recognise RSS feeds from Picasa requires a small hack (which is unavoidable). Open /wp-content/plugins/shashin/admin/ShashinSynchronizerPicasa.php.
Around line 71 you will have a method called public function retrievePicasaRssUrl(). A few lines below it there is the following code:
if (!$rssUrl) {
throw New Exception(__('Unable to determine RSS feed for URL', 'shashin') . ': ' . htmlentities($this->request['userUrl']));
}
Replace it by the following code:
if (!$rssUrl) {
/* Gwyneth Llewelyn's hack starts here */
// check first if by any chance this is already a RSS feed we're getting
$response = $this->httpRequester->request(
$this->request['userUrl'],
array('timeout' => 30, 'sslverify' => false)
);
$rssXML = new DOMDocument();
@$rssXML->loadXML($response['body']);
$xpath = new DOMXpath($rssXML);
if (count($xpath->query("/channel/item")) > 0) // this means it's a valid RSS feed, since there are more than 0 items in it
return $this->request['userUrl']; // I hope this is the right thing to return...
/* Gwyneth Llewelyn's hack ends here */
throw New Exception(__('Unable to determine RSS feed for URL', 'shashin') . ': ' . htmlentities($this->request['userUrl']));
}
and save the file.
Basically, what happens in this function is the following: Shashin will load the whole page and search for a link to a RSS URL; if it fails to find one, it throws an exception. But now we are going to give Shashin not the link to a page’s album, but the correctly generated RSS feed URL, courtesy of Casper’s RSSerator. RSS feeds are in XML, so, although this operation is hardly very efficient, all I do is start parsing the whole file again, this time using XML, and search to see if there are any entries in the RSS feed — if not, either the feed is wrongly generated (it might happen in the future, if Google changes the APIs again) or has no pictures whatsoever in it (which can happen either with an empty album, or one that is private, e.g. has no permissions to be viewed by anyone else).
If no entries are found in the RSS feed, then, yes, we should throw the exception. If there is at least one entry, then we return to the rest of Shashin the RSS URL, considering it to be ‘correct’ (and it will be).
It works flawless for me, and I’m sure that this can be optimized (it seems a waste to load the whole page again… especially because we know that Google will very likely never put any RSS feeds into Google Photos (but who knows, they might change their minds once more…) — so possibly this could be written differently to catch the valid RSS feed much sooner…
Caveat utilitor: If you manually change a file of a plugin, then security plugins such as Wordfence Security will start to complain that what you’ve got on disk is not the same as what is on www.ads-software.com’s repository. You will therefore have to instruct your security plugin to either accept or ignore this manual change.
I’ve provisionally marked this as ‘solved’, but I’m quite aware that either Google might change their APIs again and this trick will not work any longer; or, well, if you are reading this in, say, 2020 or later, it’s possible that Casper will not have his wonderful around, and that means it will be much harder to figure out the RSS feed for your album(s)… assuming, of course, that Google will still maintain those RSS feeds working (the truth is that they have announced the ‘death’ of FeedBurner years ago, and it’s still running, happily spewing out RSS feeds…)
]]>Hi,
do you plan on updating this plugin? It is not compatible with Google Photos and you can’t add new albums anymore..
Kind regards.
]]>As of August 5, 2016 it has become virtually impossible to generate album links in the expected format:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100291303544453276374/2012WordCampNashville?authkey=Gv1sRgCKTR5_qNmdmKAQ
https://plus.google.com/photos/100291303544453276374/albums/5133627534214473681?authkey=CKTR5_qNmdmKAQ
It was quite a disaster for me after 5 years of using this amazing plugin and with all my media content in google albums. I have found a workaround for now. It is somewhat cumbersome, but it works and is a lifesaver for me as long as there is no other fix.
Here is what I did.
1. Installed plugin Photo Express for Google. If you want to add unlisted albums, also complete the Google OAuth Configuration setting of this plugin
2. Use this plugin to view the album links in picasa feed format (when you add media in the visual editor of any post or page, Photo Express for Google will show you all the albums with title as links.
3.Open the link of the desired album in a new tab, it will be something like
https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?type=picasa&tab=type#https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/115458635672/albumid/6315800791904706177?alt=rss&kind=photo
4.Delete this part https://yoursite.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?type=picasa&tab=type# and load the remaining URL https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/115458635672/albumid/6315800791904706177?alt=rss&kind=photo
5. Your target link structure for shashin is
https://plus.google.com/photos/100291303544453276374/albums/5133627534214473681?authkey=CKTR5_qNmdmKAQ
Construct it from the above link by copying the correct userid (in our example 115458635672) and albumid (in our example 6315800791904706177). In case of an unlisted album, you can find the authkey in the feeds content (something like ?authkey=Gv1sRgCMyVzL3H-ceQGw attached to images’ URLs) and add it to the URL.
6. The resulting URL (in our example https://plus.google.com/photos/115458635672/albums/6315800791904706177?authkey=Gv1sRgCMyVzL3H-ceQGw ) will be processed by shahs successfully.
I know it is less convenient than straightforward copy and paste, but for those who really depend on shashin it may be a useful workaround.
]]>I created gallery but it doesn’t want to be open. I compare from other gallery previously created and I found the bug.
If your gallery name have accent, it’s not supported. I rename it without accent and, Miracle, it work.
Hi –
I’ve been able to add galleries up until today – with the following URL –
Can you help me out? I’m not sure how to adjust either the link or the settings.
]]>If i try to add my public albums, i receive the following error:
Failed to retrieve album feed at https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/111137001551073145580/?alt=json&kind=album
WP_Http Error: GnuTLS recv error (-9): A TLS packet with unexpected length was received.
Can anyone tell my, what this means?
Thanks
]]>Hi,
We’re using shashin plugin to display google picassa album as in https://www.academyofplay.org/#event-media.
The moment I click the individual photos, it only displays the image and no prettPhoto interface appears and can’t slide through the images.
In chrome, I don’t see any errors and apparently can’t figure why prettyPhoto just stops working.
A sample image link (on the image) is as follows: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-50apTMkpWR4/VkQH82cnYlI/AAAAAAAABvM/HuOwagYlk6g/IMG_0837.jpg?imgmax=912.
Appreciate if anyone could point what goes wrong to fix this?
]]>Hello,
just one short question:
Am i allowed to use this Plugin for my commercial website?
Best wishes
slgn
I feel pretty thick here asking this, but I can’t figure out how to get a link to all my public Google+ albums. I just want to include my albums on one page.
Thanks.
]]>I use the latest version of shasin 3.4.11 in wordprss 4.3. When I use the [salbumthumbs] command in one of my pages the albums appear in order but the caption of the album (brought from picassa)is not shown.
Is it possible to correct this in any way???
Can I get the older version of shasin somehow??
]]>Hello!
Picasa album have changed their public url to https://goo.gl/photos/TwXYkeHXi1ewq7zJ9
Shashin 3.4.11 doesn’t understand it anymore.
]]>Hi
I have installed the shashin plugin in my wordpress but when i’m activating the pluging it throws the below error …
Failed to create table wp_y6b5g0pbd7_shashin_album
Note : i’m using managed wordpress from godaddy !
Can any one here to help me out ?
Thanks,
Naveen
Whenever I try to upload the URL from Picasa onto the Shashin plug in, I get this message; You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page. Is there something I haven’t updated?
]]>Hello,
Can you help me to solve this problem:
I have some error message : “Failed to create table wp_shashin_album”.
How resolve this?
Thanks
It says you’re no longer developing the plugin, however it was updated a couple of weeks ago?
]]>Hi,
i need your help. When i copy the link of my google photos to share them in my blog, it appears this error:
Shashin Error:
Unrecognized URL: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipNzgXXk4LhudImYydzs43kFuw0YebPS0w3g5raB
I dont’ know how to fix it. Anyone has a solution?
Thank you so much.
Joan
All right, I just saw that this plugin is not being actively supported any more, which is a pity, since I happen to love it ?? But I saw a recent update the other day, so I’m still hopeful that someone has a fix for this…
YouTube (and Google in general) is changing the way their RSS feeds work. The ‘old’ way of grabbing a YouTube feed doesn’t work any longer, since YouTube migrated from its v2 API to the v3 API (which needs a key).
There is still a workaround. Old RSS feeds (in XML) can still be gathered with URLs like https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME, for instance.
However, this has a few limitations. First, you’re limited to the amount of API calls you can do per day. I haven’t checked if Shashin calls this every time the page is loaded, or if it is just cached once an admin reloads the URL. If so, that would work nicely.
Secondly, some reports show that only the last 15 videos (as opposed to the last 50, which is hard-coded in Shashin) are shown. This can be a limitation for some, or not.
And last but not least, which will require some extensive coding, YouTube only offers the RSS feed in XML. I’ve been looking through the Shashin code and it always expects JSON feeds. Bummer!
It’s possible to convert an XML feed to a JSON feed (not perfect, but it should work). The problem here is that Shashin is very modular, but assumes that all feeds are JSON feeds. This would require dealing with an exception at the ShashinSynchronizer class — dealing with JSON for Picasa/Twitpic but with XML for YouTube. I tried to see if I could change the Admin_ShashinSynchronizerYoutube class to grab XML instead of JSON, but it’s pretty much impossible: the parent class really assumes that the feed is in JSON.
The alternative, of course, would be to use the YouTube v3 API, which allegedly still provides JSON feeds as before. Shashin would just need to have somewhere a place to allow users to input their Google API key. And, of course, there is a bit more work involved due to the authentication. Again, I have no idea how hard this development would be, but it seems tricky: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/code_samples/php
So, unless there is a major rewriting of the Shashin code, this means that YouTube videos are out for now.
]]>Does anyone know if this works with WP 4.2.1? Just asking before I update.
]]>This is very goog add-on. But when I viewing picasa video, It playing on pop-up windows, so how can I make it playing same video frame with preview picture?
]]>Please help to fix jumps to the top of the page, when clicking “Х” (close button) on shashin images.
]]>Hi,
both pretty photo and fancy photo are not working, i checked the console, it’s showing an error from shashin -> Uncaught TypeError: undefined is not a function
Maybe that was the cause?
please see https://blog.fm-lab.com/index.php/2015/02/25/1063/#more-1063
thank you.
Pei
]]>I’ve encountered an error of visualization of album.
In IE8 the album thumbnail and related pics is distorted: View screenshot
In Mozilla Firefox is correctly displayed: View screenshot.
Does is it normal ?
Can you make the video player HTML5 cause it won’t play on mobile devices
]]>When users click on my videos I want to remove the small link “View at Picasa” how can I do this?
]]>Hello,
I am keep receiving following message after trying to add a album using google + photo link.
Failed to retrieve album feed at https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/user/101396472679686330713/albumid/6059353594798495809?alt=json&kind=photo
WP_Http Error: Connection timed out after 30001 milliseconds
If anyone know how to fix this problem, please let me know. Thank you!
]]>I have a problem on the size of the thumbnail:
And I want to remove the date, how can I do it?
Thanks
]]>Dear Mike Toppa,
Is it possible to show the album in order from newest to oldest or having custom order?
Best regards,
Kelvin.
]]>Hello. Thank you for great plugin. Shashin working perfect but I need a some changes, How can i change or choose default playing video quality in google api? Because Shashin defaults playing high resolution videos. I need medium or lower quality? How can i do this?
]]>I am using Shashin 3.4.10 with WordPress 3.9.1. The theme being used is magicblue 1.2 by BlogChemistry. The lightbox feature on my website was working perfectly until such time that i upgraded to WP version 3.9.1 and Shashin version 3.4.10. I am using old-style Shashin tags in my website having been a user since 2010.
The following page is an instance of the lightbox feature not working.
https://www.thelastpilgrimage.com/?page_id=1928
Could someone kindly help me understand what may be wrong post the upgrade and how to fix the same ? I have done a manual upgrade for WP.
]]>Hi Mike
I cant add a new album to wordpress – I receive a “connection lost” error. The album does appear in the “Manage Shanshin Albums” but not on my website
John
]]>