Phockup

Media sorting tool to organize photos and videos from your camera in folders by year, month and day.

How it works

The software will collect all files from the input directory and copy them to the output directory without changing the files content. It will only rename the files and place them in the proper directory for year, month and day.

All files which are not images or videos or those which do not have creation date information will be placed in a directory called unknown without file name change. By doing this you can be sure that the input directory can be safely deleted after the successful process completion because all files from the input directory have a copy in the output directory.

If the target file already exists, its checksum is compared with the source to determine if it is a duplicate. If the checksums are different, we do not have a duplicate and the target filename will be suffixed with a number, for example "-1". If the checksums match, the copy operation will be skipped.

Installation

Linux (snap)

Requires snapd

sudo snap install phockup

Note: snap applications can access files only in your home and /media directories for security reasons. If your media files are not located in these directories you should use the installation method below. If your files are in /media you should run the following command to allow access:

sudo snap connect phockup:removable-media

Linux (without snap)

If you are using distro which doesn't support snapd or you don't want to download the snap you can use the following commands to download the source and set it up

sudo apt-get install python3 libimage-exiftool-perl -y
curl -L https://github.com/ivandokov/phockup/archive/latest.tar.gz -o phockup.tar.gz
tar -zxf phockup.tar.gz
sudo mv phockup-* /opt/phockup
cd /opt/phockup
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
sudo ln -s /opt/phockup/phockup.py /usr/local/bin/phockup

Linux (AUR)

If you are an arch user you can install from the aur.

For example using yay:

yay -S phockup

Mac

Requires Homebrew

brew tap ivandokov/homebrew-contrib
brew install phockup

Windows

• Download and install latest stable Python 3
• Download Phockup's latest release and extract the archive
• Download exiftool from the official website and extract the archive
• Rename exiftool(-k).exe to exiftool.exe
• Move exiftool.exe to phockup folder
• Open Command Prompt and cd to phockup folder
• Use the command below (use phockup.py instead of phockup)

Docker

The docker container supports two operation modes. The first allows for a single execution of phockup. In this mode, the container will be stopped after the execution is complete. The second mode allows for execution in intervals. In this mode, the container will continue running until the user decides to stop it.

Single execution mode

In this mode, all phockup parameters need to be passed as direct parameters within the docker run command. As you define a complete set of phockup parameters for this execution mode, this includes the paths to the input and output folders within the container. To execute phockup only once, use the following command:

docker run -v ~/Pictures:/mnt ivandokov/phockup:latest /mnt/input /mnt/output [PHOCKUP ARGUMENTS]

Continuous execution mode

In this mode, all relevant settings are defined through environment variables and volume mappings. The folders where phockup moves files are always /mnt/input and /mnt/output within the container and can not be changed. You can of course map any folder on your host system to those folders within the container.

The -v ~/Pictures/input:/mnt/input part of the command mounts your ~/Pictures/input directory to /mnt/input inside the container. The same is done for the output folder. You can pass any absolute path to be mounted to the container and later on be used as paths for the phockup command. The example above provides your ~/Pictures/input as INPUTDIR and ~/Pictures/output as OUTPUDIR. You can pass additional arguments through the OPTIONS environment variable.

To keep the container running and execute phockup in intervals, use the following command:

docker run -v ~/Pictures/input:/mnt/input -v ~/Pictures/output:/mnt/output -e "CRON=* * * * *" -e "OPTIONS=[PHOCKUP ARGUMENTS]" ivandokov/phockup:latest

This will execute phockup once every minute (as defined by the value of the CRON environment variable). However, the container will not spawn a new phockup process if another phockup process is still running. You can define other intervals for execution using the usual cron syntax. If you want to pass further arguments to phockup, use the OPTIONS environment variable. In this execution mode, phockup will always use the directories mounted to /mnt/input and /mnt/output and ignore arguments passed in the style of the single execution mode.

Usage

Organize photos from one directory into another

phockup INPUTDIR OUTPUTDIR

INPUTDIR is the directory where your photos are located. OUTPUTDIR is the directory where your sorted photos will be stored. It could be a new not existing directory.

Example:

phockup ~/Pictures/camera ~/Pictures/sorted

Version

If you want to view the version of phockup use the flag -v | --version.

Date format

If you want to change the output directories date format you can do it by passing the format as -d | --date argument. You can choose different year format (e.g. 17 instead of 2017) or decide to skip the day directories and have all photos sorted in year/month.

Supported formats:
    YYYY - 2016, 2017 ...
    YY   - 16, 17 ...
    MM   - 07, 08, 09 ...
    M    - July, August, September ...
    m    - Jul, Aug, Sept ...
    DD   - 27, 28, 29 ... (day of month)
    DDD  - 123, 158, 365 ... (day of year)
    U    - 00, 01, 53 ... (week of the year, Sunday first day of week)
    W    - 00, 01, 53 ... (week of the year, Monday first day of week)

Example:
    YYYY/MM/DD -> 2011/07/17
    YYYY/M/DD  -> 2011/July/17
    YYYY/m/DD  -> 2011/Jul/17
    YY/m-DD    -> 11/Jul-17
    YYYY/U     -> 2011/30
    YYYY/W     -> 2011/28

Prefix/Suffix

In order to support both aggregation and finer granularity of files sorted, you can specify a prefix or suffix (or both) to aid in storing files in directories beyond strictly date.

NOTE: Prefixes and suffixes will also apply to the 'unknown' folder to isolate files that cannot be processed into their respective folders. This creates a bit more chaos for 'unknown' files, but should allow them to be managed by whomever they "belong" to.

Prefix

--output-prefix flag can be used to specify a directory to be appended to the OUTPUTDIR, and thus prepended to the date.

For example:

phockup ~/Pictures/camera /mnt/sorted --output_prefix=nikon

would place files in folders similar to:

/mnt/sorted/nikon/2011/07/17
/mnt/sorted/nikon/unknown

While it may seem to be redundant with OUTPUTDIR, this flag is intended to add support for more cleanly determining the output directory at run-time via environment variable expansion (i.e. use $USER, %USERNAME%, $HOSTNAME, etc. to aggregate files)

For example:

phockup ~/Pictures/camera /mnt/sorted --output_prefix=$USER

would yield an output directory of

/mnt/sorted/ivandokov/2011/07/17
/mnt/sorted/ivandokov/unknown

This allows the same script to be deployed to multiple users/machines and allows sorting into their respective top level directories.

Suffix

--output-suffix flag can be used to specify a directory within the target date directory for a file. This allows files to be sorted in their respective date/time folders while additionally adding a directory based on the suffix value for additional metadata.

For example:

phockup ~/Pictures/DCIM/NIKOND40 /mnt/sorted --output_suffix=nikon
phockup ~/Pictures/DCIM/100APPLE /mnt/sorted --output_suffix=iphone

This would allow files to be stored in the following structure:

/mnt/sorted/2011/07/17/nikon/DCS_0001.NEF
...
/mnt/sorted/2011/07/17/nikon/DCS_0099.NEF
/mnt/sorted/unknown/nikon/

/mnt/sorted/2011/07/17/iphone/ABIL6163.HEIC
...
/mnt/sorted/2011/07/17/iphone/YZYE9497.HEIC
/mnt/sorted/unknown/iphone/

The output suffix also allows for environment variable expansion (e.g. $USER, $HOSTNAME, %USERNAME%, etc.) allowing dynamic folders to represent additional metadata about the images.

For example:

phockup ~/Pictures/ /mnt/sorted --output_suffix=$HOSTNAME

or

phockup ~/Pictures/ /mnt/sorted --output_suffix=$USER

could be used to sort images based on the source computer or user, perventing hetrogenous collections of images from disparate sources saving to the same central respository.

The two options above can be used to help sort/store images

Missing date information in EXIF

If any of the photos does not have date information you can use the -r | --regex option to specify date format for date extraction from filenames:

--regex="(?P<day>\d{2})\.(?P<month>\d{2})\.(?P<year>\d{4})[_-]?(?P<hour>\d{2})\.(?P<minute>\d{2})\.(?P<second>\d{2})"

As a last resort, specify the -t | --timestamp option to use the file modification timestamp. This may not be accurate in all cases but can provide some kind of date if you'd rather it not go into the unknown folder.

Move files

Instead of copying the process will move all files from the INPUTDIR to the OUTPUTDIR by using the flag -m | --move. This is useful when working with a big collection of files and the remaining free space is not enough to make a copy of the INPUTDIR.

Link files

Instead of copying the process will create hard link all files from the INPUTDIR into new structure in OUTPUTDIR by using the flag -l | --link. This is useful when working with good structure of photos in INPUTDIR (like folders per device).

Original filenames

Organize the files in selected format or using the default year/month/day format but keep original filenames by using the flag -o | --original-names.

File Type

By default, Phockup addresses both image and video files. If you want to restrict your command to either images or videos only, use --file-type=[image|video].

Fix incorrect dates

If date extracted from photos is incorrect, you can use the -f | --date-field option to set the correct exif field to get date information from. Use this command to list which fields are available for a file:

exiftool -time:all -mimetype -j file.jpg

The output may look like this, but with more fields:

[{
  "DateTimeOriginal": "2017:10:06 01:01:01",
  "CreateDate": "2017:01:01 01:01:01",
]}

If the correct date is in DateTimeOriginal, you can include the option --date-field=DateTimeOriginal to get date information from it. To set multiple fields to be tried in order until a valid date is found, just join them with spaces in a quoted string like "CreateDate FileModifyDate".

Dry run

If you want phockup to run without any changes (don't copy/move any files) but just show which changes would be done, enable this feature by using the flag -y | --dry-run.

Log

If you want phockup to run and store the output in a log file use the flag --log. This flag can be used in conjunction with the flags --quiet or --progress.

--log=<PATH>/log.txt

Quiet run

If you want phockup to run without any output (displaying only error messages, and muting all progress messages) use the flag --quiet.

Progress run

If you want phockup to run with a progressbar (displaying only the progress and muting all progress messages (including errors)) use the flag --progress.

Limit directory traversal depth

If you would like to limit how deep the directories are traversed, you can use the --maxdepth option to specify the maximum number of levels below the input directory to process. In order to process only the input directory, you can disable sub-directory processing with: --maxdepth=0 The current implementation is limited to a maximum depth of 255.

Improving throughput with concurrency

If you want to allocate additional CPUs/cores to the image processing operations, you can specify additional resources via the --max-concurrency flag. Specifying --max-concurrency=n, where n represents the maximum number of operations to attempt concurrently, will leverage the additional CPU resources to start additional file operations while waiting for file I/O. This can lead to significant increases in file processing throughput.

Due to how concurrency is implemented in Phockup (specifically ThreadPoolExecutor), this option has the greatest impact on directories with a large numbers of files in them, versus many directories with small numbers of files in each. As a general rule, the concurrency should not be set higher than the core-count of the system processing the images.

--max-concurrency=1 has the default behavior of no concurrency while processing the files in the directories. Beginning with 50% of the cores available is a good start. Larger numbers can have diminishing returns as the number of concurrent operations saturate the file I/O of the system.

Concurrently processing files does have an impact on the order that messages are written to the console/log and the ability to quickly terminate the program, as the execution waits for all in-flight operations to complete before shutting down.

Development

Running tests

To run the tests, first install the dev dependencies using

pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt

Then run the tests using

pytest

To run the tests with coverage reports run

pytest --cov-report term-missing:skip-covered --cov=src tests/

Please add the necessary tests when committing a feature or improvement.

Pre-commit checks

We leverage the pre-commit framework to automate some general linting/quality checks.

To install the hooks, from within the activated virtualenv run:

pre-commit install

To manually execute the hooks, run:

pre-commit run -a

Style Guide Ruleset

Please make sure that the code is compliant as described below when committing a feature or improvement.

Flake8

We use flake8 to check the PEP 8 ruleset.

Code style for the line length are following the description of the tool black In a nutshell, this comes down to to 88 characters per line. This number was found to produce significantly shorter files.

isort

We also use isort to check if import are sorted alphabetically, separated into sections and by type.

single-quotes and double-quotes

We try to adhere to the following as much as possible: Use single-quotes for string literals, e.g. 'my-identifier', but use double-quotes for strings that are likely to contain single-quote characters as part of the string itself (such as error messages, or any strings containing natural language), e.g. "You've got an error!".

Single-quotes are easier to read and to type, but if a string contains single-quote characters then double-quotes are better than escaping the single-quote characters or wrapping the string in double single-quotes.