Synology Photos Util

• List folders containing photos in a Synology Photos album
• Copy album contents into a Synology Photos folder

Why?

This is a simple console app querying Synology Photos API to deduce locations (folder paths) of photos added to a Synology Photos album or copy photos added to an album to a folder.

I used it while doing some spring cleaning of photos on my Synology NAS. Maybe someone will find it handy as well.

How?

Download the archive for your platform from Releases, unzip and execute

./SynologyPhotosUtil --help

or on Windows

SynologyPhotosUtil.exe --help

This will display a help message about required command line arguments:

Global options:
    -h, --help                          Prints this message
    -v, --version                       Print version information

Commands:
    list <ALBUM-NAME>                   List photos in album
    export <ALBUM-NAME> <FOLDER-PATH>   Copy photos to a folder in personal space
    
Common command options (available for all commands):
    -a, --address <URL>                 [REQUIRED] HTTP(S) address of Synology DSM
    -u, --user <USER-NAME>              [REQUIRED] DSM user account name
    -p, --password <PASSWORD>           [REQUIRED] DSM user account password
    -o, --otp <OTP-CODE>                OTP code when 2FA is enabled for user account

<ALBUM-NAME> and <FOLDER-PATH> are case sensitive. <FOLDER-PATH> must exist in user's personal space. 
<ALBUM-NAME> can be a person in "People" album.

• ALBUM-NAME as it stands in Synology Photos, enclose in quotes if the name contains any spaces

See the usage example below.

Usage example

Listing an album

Assuming a DSM user account is named "my_user" and has access to Synology Photos album "My Album", the application can be executed in the following way:

./SynologyPhotosUtil list "My Album" -a http://diskstation.address -u my_user -p my_password

Note: The address value should be the same as the one you use to open DSM in your browser. Unless you use non-standard ports (5000 for HTTP and 5001 for HTTPS), you can omit the port, otherwise it needs to be specified e.g. http://diskstation.address:5042.

Alternatively, if your account has two factor authentication enabled, you must also provide a one time code from your authenticator app with the -o argument e.g.:

./SynologyPhotosUtil list "My Album" -a http://diskstation.address -u my_user -p my_password -o 123456

Depending on the connection speed, and how many photos are added to "My Album", querying the API can take a moment. The output can look like this, for example:

P: /personal_space_folder/my_photos/IMG_1111.jpg
S: /shared_space_folder/IMG_2222.JPG
ERROR: IMG_3333.jpeg folder inaccessible

In this example "My Album" contains 3 photos:

• The the IMG_1111.jpg photo is located in one of the user's "personal space" folders (indicated by leading P:), i.e. (by default) under {your user's home directory}/Photos in a personal_space_folder/my_photos folder.
• The IMG_2222.JPG photo is located in "shared space" (indicated by leading S:), i.e. under photo shared folder in shared_space_folder.
• In case of IMG_3333.jpeg the physical location of the file is inaccessible to my_user. This happens e.g. when there are other NAS users having provider access to "My Album" and they added photos from their personal space. Other possibility is that "My Album" has been created by another user and shared with my_user - depending on permissions, some or all of the photo locations may be inaccessible for my_user. These photos are listed at the end of the output with a leading ERROR message.

Exporting an album

./SynologyPhotosUtil export "My Album" "/folder A/folder B" -a http://diskstation.address -u my_user -p my_password

Note that currently /folder A/folder B needs to already exist in user's personal space.

The command schedules a background task to copy the photos, so the output needs to be inspected in Synology Photos web interface (Background Tasks icon in the top right region) - remember to refresh the page to see it. Photos inaccessible due to permissions will not be copied. If there are identically named photos in the target folder already, they will not get overwritten.

TODO

• Add add-photo-to-album command
• Add optional debug information
• Improve output of export command
• Add support for "Places" albums

Code disclaimer

This is my first attempt at programming in F#. I'm coming from C# world and I used this project as a learning exercise. The code could probably be written in more functional way but I'm still learning. I'm very open for feedback in this regard.

Credits

• zeichensatz/SynologyPhotosAPI contains description of the Synology Photos API that got me started
• fsharpforfunandprofit.com is a fantastic resource where I learned the F# basics