photo-db-fs is a FUSE virtual file system for Linux that exposes a photo database as a file system. At the moment it only supports digiKam but is built to be extensible so as to support other photo management programs in the future. It currently supports exposing the entire tag hierarchy as a file system, grouping photos by rating, and also supports adding custom queries where the results of the query are exposed as a file system.
This project grew out of my desire to have my desktop background cycle through all of my favorite photos although it has many other uses as well. photo-db-fs is great for any situation where you want a directory of your photos automatically organized by photo tags and/or ratings:
- Have your desktop background cycle through your favorite photos
- Have a digital picture frame cycle through a subset of your photos
- Use
rcloneon a cron job to push a subset of your photos out Google Photos for your Chromecast background on your TV
Visit the releases page to download one of the prebuilt binaries.
Build and install from source:
go install github.com/anitschke/photo-db-fs@latest
[anitschk@localhost ~]$ photo-db-fs -h
Usage of photo-db-fs:
-config-file string
photo-db-fs config file
-db-source string
source of the database photo-db-fs will use for querying,
ie for local databases this is the path to the database
-db-type string
type of photo database photo-db-fs will use for querying
-log-level string
debugging logging level
-mount-point string
location where photo-db-fs file system will be mounted
example:
[anitschk@localhost ~]$ mkdir /tmp/myPhotos
[anitschk@localhost ~]$ photo-db-fs \
--mount-point /tmp/myPhotos \
--db-type digikam-sqlite \
--db-source ~/Pictures/digikam4.db &
[1] 12910
[anitschk@localhost ~]$ ls /tmp/myPhotos/tags/DesktopBackground/photos
009318790e574d9764679ec1b8f0a987.jpg 5c23b47abdb881acee6b1f5313ecbc71.JPG
01586b0bc31424ab3b156ffdac8ef58f.JPG 5c4918818f3f14575f76c78ad1cf62d6.JPG
0338a700e5e602c496abdcad2deaa133.jpg 5da619a984339d0e1bd4b80de91a79cd.jpg
[anitschk@localhost ~]$ kill %1
Note that all flags may also be specified in the json config file specified by the -config-file flag.
By default photo-db-fs exposes the entire tag hierarchy as a file system, but it can also be configured to expose custom queries as a filesystem that can query the database for photos that match any arbitrary set operations of tags. These custom queries must be written in a json config file.
For example the following config can be used to show a directory full of photos of kayaking in New York state, a second with photos of kayaking NOT in New York state, and a third with photos of kayaking AND canoeing.
{
"queries" : [
{
"name": "KayakingNewYork",
"selector": {
"type": "and",
"properties": {
"operands": {
"selectors": [
{
"type": "hasTag",
"properties": {
"tag": {
"strings": [
"Activity", "Kayak"
]
}
}
},
{
"type": "hasTag",
"properties": {
"tag": {
"strings": [
"Location", "US", "NY"
]
}
}
},
]
}
}
}
},
{
"name": "KayakingNotNewYork",
"selector": {
"type": "difference",
"properties": {
"starting": {
"selector": {
"type": "hasTag",
"properties": {
"tag": {
"strings": [
"Activity", "Kayak"
]
}
}
}
},
"excluding": {
"selector": {
"type": "hasTag",
"properties": {
"tag": {
"strings": [
"Location", "US", "NY"
]
}
}
}
}
}
}
},
{
"name": "KayakingOrCanoeing",
"selector": {
"type": "or",
"properties": {
"operands": {
"selectors": [
{
"type": "hasTag",
"properties": {
"tag": {
"strings": [
"Activity", "Kayak"
]
}
}
},
{
"type": "hasTag",
"properties": {
"tag": {
"strings": [
"Activity", "Canoe"
]
}
}
},
]
}
}
}
},
]
}The current recommendation to automatically mount is to use a systemd service file to automatically run photo-db-fs. For example see we could write the following photo-db-fs.service file.
[Unit]
Description=photo-db-fs FUSE file system server
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/anitschk/go/bin/photo-db-fs --mount-point /srv/media/photo-db-fs --db-type digikam-sqlite --db-source /srv/media/digiKamDB/digikam4.db
[Install]
WantedBy=default.targetThen install as a user service using
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/
cp photo-db-fs.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user enable photo-db-fs.service
systemctl --user start photo-db-fs.serviceCorrect way automatically mount
A systemd .service file isn't really the right way to do this. The correct way would be to hook it up via /etc/fstab or a systemd .mount file instead. There is some good discussion on how rclone (also written in Go) does this and it sounds like they need to do some interpreting/translating of how mount passes it the options because it is a little non-standard. I did some looking in their source but don't see anything obvious as to how they are doing it. see rclone doc