Flickr Backup

Flickr offers unlimited storage for Pro accounts, and they allow you to have private photos, so they are an excellent photo backup service. They have a great API, and lots of apps. But I don't trust those apps, so I made my own backup script.

Requirements:

• homebrew

You should have this already.

• node

Simple: brew install node

• flickr-with-uploads
• optimist
• glob

Just npm install to install those from the package.json file.

Setup:

Make a new app on Flickr, and create a file called .env in the same directory as backup.js. The .env file should look like this (after all the auth has been set up):

FLICKR_API_KEY=i0LOwemEyB7SHoQgzGfvxPKjhlIbuDYs
FLICKR_API_SECRET=FnM2RhOwXjB5tVrl
FLICKR_OA_TOKEN=FYSWxIJTGwvDHc98P-0n2tVdLUkmQsCBOX3
FLICKR_OA_TOKEN_SECRET=H8RcVM96oLtA0Gpd

See AutoAuth for help on getting these credentials together. It's a bit of a pain, I know.

• FLICKR_API_KEY= the "App Key"
• FLICKR_API_SECRET= the "App Secret"
• FLICKR_OA_TOKEN= access_token=??? output
• FLICKR_OA_TOKEN_SECRET= access_token_secret=??? output

Instructions

Basically, it just reads from a folder, which should contain a list of other folders (which in turn correspond to photosets) containing images.

For example, here is a smidgen of my Pictures directory:

/Users/chbrown/Pictures/
  - 20120710 Sarahs/
    - VB7O0896.JPG
    - VB7O0897.JPG
  - 20120722 Iceland - LungA/
    - VB7O3427.JPG
    - VB7O3428.JPG
    - VB7O3429.JPG
  - 20120806 Iceland - Snaefesnes/
    - VB7O3450.JPG
    - VB7O3451.JPG
    - VB7O3452.JPG
    - VB7O3453.JPG
    - VB7O3454.JPG

Each picture is about 10 MB, so for this structure and size, I would run:

node backup.js --dir=/Users/chbrown/Pictures --workers=5

For smaller pictures, or if you have a whole lot of bandwidth, you can add more workers.