The command line catalog tool for your offline data

Did you ever wanted to find back that specific file that should be on one of your backup DVDs or one of your external hard drives? You usually go through all of them hoping to find the right one on the first try? Catcli indexes external media in a catalog file and allows to quickly find specific files or even navigate in the catalog of indexed files while these are not connected to your host.

Features:

• Index any directories in a catalog
• Ability to search for files by name in the catalog
• Ability to navigate through indexed data à la ls
• Support for fuse to mount the indexed data as a virtual filesystem
• Handle archive files (zip, tar, ...) and index their content
• Save catalog to json for easy versioning with git
• Command line interface FTW
• Store files and directories sizes
• Store md5 hash of files
• Ability to update the catalog
• Support for fzf for finding files
• Tag your different storages with additional information
• Export catalog to CSV

Quick start:

# install catcli with pip
pip3 install catcli --user
# index a directory in the catalog
catcli index --meta='some description' log /var/log
# display the content
catcli ls -r
# navigate
catcli ls log
# find files/directories named '*log*'
catcli find log
# show directories sizes
catcli du log

see usage for specific info

Catcli gives the ability to navigate, explore and find your files that are stored on external media (DVDs, hard drives, USB sticks, etc) when those are not connected. Catcli can just as easily index any arbitrary directories.

See the examples for an overview of the available features.

Table of Contents

• Installation

• Usage

  • Index data
  • Index archive files
  • Walk indexed files with ls
  • Find files
  • Mount catalog
  • Display entire hierarchy
  • Disk usage
  • Catalog graph
  • Edit storage
  • Update catalog
  • CSV format

• Examples

• Contribution

• Thank you

Install from Pypi

$ pip3 install catcli --user

Or from github directly

$ cd /tmp; git clone https://github.com/deadc0de6/catcli && cd catcli
$ sudo python3 setup.py install
$ catcli --help

To work with catcli without installing it, you can do the following

$ cd /tmp; git clone https://github.com/deadc0de6/catcli && cd catcli
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt --user
$ python3 -m catcli.catcli --help

or install it in a virtualenv

$ cd /tmp; git clone https://github.com/deadc0de6/catcli && cd catcli
$ virtualenv -p python3 env
$ source env/bin/activate
$ python setup.py install
$ catcli --help

Catcli is also available on aur: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/catcli-git/

Each indexed directory is stored in the catalog. Multiple directories can be indexed and they are all available through the command line interface of catcli.

Five different types of entry are present in a catalog:

• top node: this is the root of the hierarchy
• storage node: this represents an indexed storage (a DVD, an external hard drive, an USB drive, some arbitrary directory, etc).
• dir node: this is a directory
• file node: this is a file
• archive node: this is a file contained in an archive (tar, zip, etc)

Following environment variables are supported:

• CATCLI_CATALOG_PATH: define the catalog path (--catalog=<path>)
• CATCLI_NO_BANNER: disable the banner (--no-banner)
• CATCLI_VERBOSE: enable verbose mode (--verbose)
• CATCLI_FORMAT: define the output format (-F --format=<fmt>)

Let's say the DVD or external hard drive that needs to be indexed is mounted on /media/mnt. The following command will index the entire directory /media/mnt and store that in your catalog under the name <short-name>.

$ catcli index --meta=<some-description> <short-name> /media/mnt

If not specified otherwise (with the switch --catalog), the catalog is saved in the current directory under catcli.catalog.

The --meta switch allows to add any additional information to store along in the catalog like for example the blue disk in my office.

Using the -a --archive switch allows to also index archive files as explained below.

Catcli is able to index and explore the content of archive files. Following archive formats are supported: tar, tar.gz, tar.xz, lzma, tar.bz2, zip. Catcli is also able to find files within indexed archive files.

See the archive example for more.

A catalog can be walked using the command ls as if the media is mounted (File/directories separator is /).

$ catcli ls tmp/a/b/c

Resulting files can be sorted by size using -S --sortsize. See the examples for more.

Files and directories can be found based on their names using the find command.

Find support two formats that allow to use fzf for searching:

• --format=fzf-native: display the result in native format
• --format=fzf-csv: display the result in csv

See the examples for more.

The catalog can be mounted with fuse and navigate like any filesystem.

$ mkdir /tmp/mnt
$ catcli index -c github .github
$ catcli mount /tmp/mnt
$ ls -laR /tmp/mnt
drwxrwxrwx - user  8 Mar 22:08 github

mnt/github:
.rwxrwxrwx 17 user 19 Oct  2022 FUNDING.yml
drwxrwxrwx  - user  2 Mar 10:15 workflows

mnt/github/workflows:
.rwxrwxrwx 691 user 19 Oct  2022 pypi-release.yml
.rwxrwxrwx 635 user  8 Mar 21:08 testing.yml

The entire catalog can be shown using the ls -r command. Resulting files can be sorted by size using the -S --sortsize switch.

See the examples for more.

You can get the disk usage with the du command. Resulting files can be sorted by size using the -S --sortsize switch.

The catalog can be exported in a dot file that can be used to generate a graph of the indexed files.

$ catcli graph
dot file created under "/tmp/catcli.dot"
create graph with "dot /tmp/catcli.dot -T png -o /tmp/tree.png" (you need graphviz)
$ dot /tmp/catcli.dot -T png -o /tmp/tree.png

Storage entry can be edited with following catcli commands:

• rename - rename the storage
• edit - edit storage metadata

The catalog can be updated with the update command. Updates are based on the access time of each of the files and on the hash checksum if present (catalog was indexed with -c --hash and update is called with the switch -c --hash).

Results can be printed to CSV using --format=csv. Fields are separated by a comma (,) and are quoted with double quotes (").

Each line contains the following fields:

• name: the entry name
• type: the entry type (file, directory, storage, etc)
• path: the entry path
• size: the entry size
• indexed_at: when this entry was indexed
• maccess: the entry modification date/time
• md5: the entry checksum (if any)
• nbfiles: the number of children (empty for nodes that are not storage or directory)
• free_space: free space (empty for not storage nodes)
• total_space: total space (empty for not storage nodes)
• meta: meta information (empty for not storage nodes)

Let's first create some files and directories:

$ mkdir -p /tmp/test/{a,b,c}
$ echo 'something in files in a' > /tmp/test/a/{1,2,3}
$ echo 'something else in files in b' > /tmp/test/b/{4,5,6}
$ echo 'some bytes' > /tmp/test/c/{7,8,9}
$ tree /tmp/test
/tmp/test
├── a
│   ├── 1
│   ├── 2
│   └── 3
├── b
│   ├── 4
│   ├── 5
│   └── 6
└── c
    ├── 7
    ├── 8
    └── 9

3 directories, 9 files

First this directory is indexed with catcli as if it was some kind of external storage:

$ catcli index --meta='my test directory' tmptest /tmp/test

Catcli creates its catalog file in the current directory as catcli.catalog.

Printing the entire catalog as a tree is done with the command ls -r

$ catcli ls -r
top
└── storage: tmptest (my test directory) (nbfiles:3, free:3.7G/3.7G, date:2019-01-26 19:59:47)
    ├── a [nbfiles:3, totsize:72]
    │   ├── 1 [size:24]
    │   ├── 2 [size:24]
    │   └── 3 [size:24]
    ├── b [nbfiles:3, totsize:87]
    │   ├── 4 [size:29]
    │   ├── 5 [size:29]
    │   └── 6 [size:29]
    └── c [nbfiles:3, totsize:33]
        ├── 7 [size:11]
        ├── 8 [size:11]
        └── 9 [size:11]

The catalog can be walked with ls as if it was a normal directory

$ catcli ls
top
- storage: tmptest (my test directory) (nbfiles:3, free:3.7G/3.7G, date:2019-01-26 19:59:47)

$ catcli ls tmptest
storage: tmptest (my test directory) (nbfiles:3, free:3.7G/3.7G, date:2019-01-26 19:59:47)
- a [nbfiles:3, totsize:72]
- b [nbfiles:3, totsize:87]
- c [nbfiles:3, totsize:33]

$ catcli ls tmptest/b
b [nbfiles:3, totsize:87]
- 4 [size:29]
- 5 [size:29]
- 6 [size:29]

And files can be found using the command find

$ catcli find 9

c/9 [size:11, storage:tmptest]

When using the -b --script switch, a one-liner is generated that allows to handle the found file(s)

$ catcli find 9 --script

c/9 [size:11, storage:tmptest]
op=file; source=/media/mnt; $op ${source}/c/9

Let's consider a directory containing archive files:

$ ls -1 /tmp/catcli
catcli-0.3.1
v0.3.1.tar.gz
v0.3.1.zip

To enable the indexing of archive contents use the -a --archive switch

$ catcli index -au some-name /tmp/catcli

Then any command can be used to explore the catalog as for normal files but, by providing the -a --archive switch, archive content are displayed.

$ catcli ls some-name

   storage: some-name (free:800G, total:1T)
   - catcli-0.3.1 [nbfiles:11, totsize:80.5K]
   - v0.3.1.tar.gz [size:24.2K]
   - v0.3.1.zip [size:31.2K]

$ catcli ls -r some-name/v0.3.1.zip

   v0.3.1.zip [size:31.2K]

$ catcli ls -ar some-name/v0.3.1.zip

   v0.3.1.zip [size:31.2K]
   ├── catcli-0.3.1 [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── catcli [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── __init__.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── catalog.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── catcli.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── logger.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── noder.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── utils.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   └── walker.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── .gitignore [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── LICENSE [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── MANIFEST.in [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── README.md [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── requirements.txt [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── setup.cfg [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── setup.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── tests [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── __init__.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── helpers.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── test_find.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── test_graph.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── test_index.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── test_ls.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   ├── test_rm.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   │   └── test_tree.py [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   ├── tests.sh [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   │   └── .travis.yml [archive:v0.3.1.zip]
   └── catcli-0.3.1/ [archive:v0.3.1.zip]

If you are having trouble installing or using catcli, open an issue.

If you want to contribute, feel free to do a PR (please follow PEP8).

The tests.sh script can be run to check the code.

If you like catcli, buy me a coffee.

This project is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 license.