Lycheesync

Lycheesync is a command line tool to synchronise a directory containing photos with Lychee.

• Lycheesync is meant to be used on the same server that run Lychee. If your photo source directory is on another computer, use synchronize tools like rsync or owncloud.
• Lycheesync is often meant to be run regulary and automatically, use cron for this (or monitor filesystem events if you want your photos really fast online)

WARNING: Breaking changes

Sorry for the inconvenience but Lycheesync has change a lot in the last weeks. I added a few dependencies and remove others. As an exemple the mysql driver has changed, so... Check the install Chapter !

PS: I strongly recommand to use python3.4 with a virtualenv even if python2.7 will still be supported in the following months.

Issue / logs

If you have read the documentation below and it still doesn't work as expected for you, feel free to submit a github issue.

Complete logs for the last run can be found in logs/lycheesync.log, if it's relevant, please attach them to your issue.

Context

This project was created to synchronize an owncloud photo repositories and Lychee. It turns out it can, totally or partially, enslave Lychee with any given directory structure.

The program is simple it scans a directory for files and subdirectories:

• subdirectories are converted to Lychee albums
• files are imported in Lychee as photos

You can choose between 3 behaviours:

• Lychee as a slave: Lychee db is drop before each run -d option
• Lychee as a slave only for album in the source directories: albums existing in Lychee but not in the source directory will be kept -r option
• Keep existing Lychee albums and photos The program will try to know if a photo in the source directory has already been imported in Lychee and does nothing in this case, this is the default behaviour

What's new

See changelog

Install

Retrieve the project

git clone https://github.com/GustavePate/lycheesync

Install dependencies

Then you have to install the following dependencies:

• python 2.7, 3.4 or 3.5 (python 3 prefered !)
• pillow
• dateutils
• pymysql
• click

Using a virtual env (the GOOD way)

On debian based Linux

sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3.4-venv libjpeg-dev zlib1g-dev
cd /path/to/lycheesync
pyvenv-3.4 ./venv3.4
. ./venv3.4/bin/activate
which pip # should give you a path in your newly created ./venv3.4 dir
# if not execute: curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py | python
pip install -r requirements.txt

And wait for compilation to finish ;)

Using the distro package manager (the BAD way)

On debian based Linux

sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3 python3-pymysql python3-click python3-pil python3-dateutil libjpeg-dev

PS: Depending on your distro version, you may need to activate universe repository for you distribution first.

Adjust configuration

Finally, adjust the ressources/conf.json file to you use case. Explanations in next chapter.

Basic usage

Configuration

The configuration file is straight-forward. Simply enter your Lychee DB configuration. publicAlbum should be set to 1 if you want to make public all your photos. excludeAlbums is a list of patterns which albums not to include. The example below will not import the album /home/snowden/albums/secret and any directory named .DAV or temp:

{
    "db":"lychee",
    "dbUser":"lychee",
    "dbPassword":"cheely",
    "dbHost":"localhost",
    "thumbQuality":80,
    "publicAlbum": 0,
    "excludeAlbums": [
        "/home/snowden/albums/secret",
        "*/.DAV",
        "*/temp"
    ]
}

Command line parameters

The basic usage is python -m lycheesync.sync srcdir lycheepath conf

Where:

• srcdir is the directory containing photos you want to add to Lychee
• lycheepath is the path were you installed Lychee (usually /var/www/lychee)
• conf is the full path to your configuration file (usually ./ressources/conf.json)

Explanation

The default mod is a merge mode.

Given the following source tree:

_srcdir
    |_album1
        |_a1p1.jpg
        |_a1p2.jpg
    |_album2
        |_album21
            |_a21p1.jpg
            |_a21p2.jpg
        |_album22
            |_a22p1.jpg

And this lychee prexisting structure:

|_album1
    |_a1p1.jpg
    |_a1p3.jpg
|_album3
    |_a3p1.jpg

Lychee doesn't support yet sub-albums so any sub-directory in your source directory will be flat-out The resulting lychee structure will be:

|_album1
    |_a1p1.jpg (won't be re-imported by default)
    |_a1p2.jpg
    |_a1p3.jpg
|_album2_album21 (notice directory / subdirectory concatenation)
    |_a21p1.jpg
    |_a21p2.jpg
|_album2_album22
    |_a22p1.jpg
|_album3
    |_a3p1.jpg

Counters

At the end of the script a few counters will be displayed in order to keep you informed of what have been done.

Directory scanned: /var/www/lychee/Lychee/dirsync/test/
Created albums:  4
10 photos imported on 10 discovered

Advanced usage

Command line switches

You can choose between the following options to adjust the program behaviour:

• -v verbose mode. A little more output
• -r replace album mode. If a pre-existing album is found in Lychee that match a soon to be imported album. The pre-existing album is removed before hand. Usefull if you want to have lychee in slave mode only for a few albums
• -d drop all mode. Everything in Lychee is dropped before import. Usefull to make lychee a slave of another repository
• -l link mode. Don't copy files from source folder to lychee directory structure, just create symbolic links (thumbnails will however be created in lychee's directory structure)
• -s sort mode. Sort album by name in lychee. Could be usefull if your album names start with the date (YYYYMMDD).
• -c --sanitycheck sanity check mode. Will remove empty album, orphan files, broken links...

Choose your album cover

Add _star at the end of one filename in a directory and this photo will be stared, making it your album cover. Ex: P1000274_star.JPG

Using crontab to automate synchronization

Add this line in your crontab (crontab -e) to synchronize a photo directory to your lychee installation every day at 2 am.

0 2 * * * cd /path/to/lycheesync && . ./venv3.4/bin/activate && python -m lycheesync.sync /path/to/photo_directory/ /var/www/path/to/lychee/ ./ressources/conf.json -d > /tmp/lycheesync.out.log 2>&1

Technical doc

This code is pep8 compliant and well documented, if you want to contribute, thanks to keep it this way.

This project files are:

• lycheesync/sync.py: argument parsing and conf reading, defer work to lycheesyncer
• lycheesync/lycheesyncer: logic and filesystem operations
• lycheesync/lycheedao: database operations
• lycheesync/lycheemodel: a lychee photo representation, manage exif tag parsing too
• ressources/conf.json: the configuration file

Licence

MIT License