FORMAT=LOL

I was playing around with APIs from some of my favourite sites. So far I have created some web apps with Twitter and Flickr. Currently I am playing with the del.icio.us API to fetch my bookmarks into my web app. So far, my favourite feed format has been JSON. It's easier to use as I am doing it with JavaScript. I did test other formats too.

While running through the Flickr feed formats I found that Flickr has a feed format called LOL (for the infamous LOLCAT language). It is not published in their documentations unlike the other formats (json, rss and atom). But they do specify the following in their documentations.

Other feed formats include php, php_serial, csv, json, sql, yaml, cdf and more.

So, this is one of the "more" formats that they say, or is this something like an easter egg.

Here’s an example of returned data from (http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=cats&format=lol):

HAI
IM IN UR BUCKETS MAKING UP FORMATS
GIMME PHOTOS FROM EVERYONE TAGGED CATS
 I CAN HAS PHOTO CAYCE AND EDGAR
  ITZ AT http://www.flickr.com/photos/_edna_million/2390900599/
  INVISIBLE METADATA
  LOL
 KTHX.
 I CAN HAS PHOTO CAYCE AND EDGAR
  ITZ AT http://www.flickr.com/photos/_edna_million/2390892781/
  INVISIBLE METADATA
  LOL
 KTHX.
I IS BORED
KTHXBYE.

Grab the data as usual, the format attribute is lol.

Web development sometimes becomes fun with these kinda things. Kudos to Flickr developers for developing something fun like this. I really like it. But then, the next step is how to parse the lol cat formatted data. I guess only a cat would know that. :D