UX: Auto Import / Index

[p-baum]

I would prefer to automate the import of files that find their way to my Import directory. How about some kind of Import directory polling/watching?

[lastzero]

That's basically what happens when you use our integrated WebDAV sync feature. We think about adding more options / workers to run additional operations in the background, although it might impact performance for some users and consume additional energy (for example, because the CPU frequently wakes up from sleep).

[p-baum]

What/where is the integrated WebDAV sync feature?

[p-baum]

Actually the use case I have in mind here is for importing from the filesystem for which the WebDAV feature bears no relevance.

[lastzero]

Our copy command works from any local directory and will only import new files without modifying the source. You can easily run it with cron. For remote file systems / APIs, we will provide additional support in the future.

[p-baum]

Ok. I was hoping to avoid cron. Can of worms on docker.

[RAYs3T]

@p-baum You could define the cron on the host-system and pass the command to the docker. Using this method you wouldn't have to deal with modification to the original image / container.

For example:

*/10 * * * * docker exec <container-name> /bin/bash echo "This is executed in the container..."

[lastzero]

Reason we don't import / index originals automatically is that we don't know when files are added / modified. So it might happen that PhotoPrism tries to index a file that is currently being uploaded, and that will lead to an error (at best). Maybe not a big deal, but it's better to run indexing operations when you know other apps don't perform changes at the same time or at a time you know is safe.

[RyanRaw]

Reason we don't import / index originals automatically is that we don't know when files are added / modified. So it might happen that PhotoPrism tries to index a file that is currently being uploaded, and that will lead to an error (at best). Maybe not a big deal, but it's better to run indexing operations when you know other apps don't perform changes at the same time or at a time you know is safe.

Excuse me, I want to create a timed task to automatically index photos at 2 AM, how do I do it?

[RAYs3T]

@rainsuns If you're on linux you could create a cron job that executes a command in the docker container using docker exec

For example (on your host system) use crontab -e to edit your cronjobs.
Make sure to do this for either the root user (crontab -e -u root) or a user that is in the docker group so it can execute commands against the docker daemon.

Add a new line to the cron file

0 2 * * *    /usr/bin/docker exec -it <name_of_photo_prism_container> /photoprism/bin/photoprism index

Replace <name_of_photo_prism_container> with the name of your PP container (docker ps will tell you the name).

I'm using the docker flag -i so that you can see the output in the system logs.

Extra tip, for more special times here is a great site for cron timings

[thelioncape]

I think this would be a useful feature - similar to how the blackhole idea works with bittorrent clients.
The service would check a blackhole directory for photos, videos, etc. periodically (every few minutes? It's not an intensive operation to list files in a directory) and then move and process the files into folders in the photo library. I'm happy to try making something like this if it's something that's likely to be implemented

[Engr-AllanG]

I am currently trying to determine the best way to autosync as well, so I can have auto upload with my phone. I tried out Nextcloud but had issues with Nextcloud's auto upload and duplicate files. I trieid Seafile but looks like android auto uplaod is currently broken. Regardless I don't really want a duplicate library in Nextcloud. Next I tried FolderSync on android to upload via webdav directly to originals folder. But as discussed in this thread, you have to manually initiate indexing or use Cron or something. I suppose I could have the cron job run every few minutes, but having it auto scan a folder sounds better. I don't know anything about cron yet.

The other way I'm looking at doing it is in conjunction with FolderSync, creating a webdav server or adding webdav to my samba server and then using the already exiting photoprism sync-via-webdav feature. The downside to this is currently photoprism sync is limited to a minimum of once an hour. I'm trying to replace my phone photo app, and this requires 'instant' upload so that I could share via public link a photo/video right after taking the picture (which I do quite a bit, mostly for large videos)