Do I need to authenticate on Flickr just to retrieve my own photosets?

I'm sort of confused about Flickr API Access. Id like for my Android app to retrieve a list of photos that I have set as private in my own Flickr account.

I'm currently able to retrieve my own photoset if the photos are public no problem. If the photoset contains private photos, then that photoset doesn't get returned from the flickr.photo开发者_高级运维sets.getList method.

Considering that I don't want the end user to authenticate, I dont need to implement oAuth; I just want my app to have access. Do I need to authenticate once and get a token, hard-code the token in my app, and then send authenticated calls to the API?

From Flickr's point of view, it does not matter who coded the application. Flickr will let you access your application access your data on Flickr only when you have authorized your application to do so. You will have to authenticate once at least. However, if the token becomes invalid then you can't access the data. Also, hard coding the token has security issues unless you are not concerned about someone accessing your private photos.

A quick Google search gave me this library - http://code.google.com/p/androidflickr/ You can try using it.

The scenario which you are describing is sometimes referred to as 2-legged OAuth. (https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OAuth2ServiceAccount)
Google APIs support this via a 'service account'.

Unfortunately Flickr doesn't seem to support this kind of interaction. So, as you described: For public data interaction (like downloading your public photos (photostream) from your account), there's no need to authenticate.
But for other interactions (like downloading private photos (camera roll) from your account), full OAuth procedure is required at least once.