Ability to upload local image to photoprism

[o0Zz]

Hi,

I'm interressted to have an equivalent to Google photos, meaning be able to see my photoprism library but also to automatically detect new pictures on the phone and upload them in background without any user interaction (With some options like, when wifi is available etc...).

Do you have any plan for such kind of feature ?
I can contribute to develop it and send a pull request, however I want to make sure first, it make sense for you :)

I found some application on the playstore to sync with photoprism or webdav but none of them match my needs (Either not working, or need to pay, or with ads, or no automatic upload)

Thank you and great work by the way ;)

[Radiokot]

Hi. Thank you for checking out the app.

The gallery is not intended to sync content with the library. Sync is a separate, complicated process with lots of edge-cases and workarounds, where error causes a mess in a library. I don't want to bother with it, especially when there are well tested apps doing the thing.

I recommend using Autosync. It has many supported sync methods, including WebDAV. For each method, they give a free trial, so you can test it for your use-case. Lifetime license is cheap. Me with my wife use this app to sync our photos in the upload mirror mode, it works flawlessly.

[o0Zz]

Yep I do agree, It's better to have 1 app that does 1 thing well than an app that does 1000 things badly.

You're right, Autosync is one of the best one, however they don't have a trigger "On new picture". Meaning you have to manually select the folder you want to sync. So. if you receive a photo on what's app for example, you have to manually select the what's app download folder. It's not really convenient when you have multiple applications and multiple phones.

I will see how to deal with that, but I'm really motivated to do a fork of your app for that ^^.

[Radiokot]

I really recommend you first try to do this with the existing tools.
Autosync has an automation API which allows other apps triggering the sync. On the other hand, there are several powerful automation apps that can use the API and have file system triggers. For example, this video shows how to trigger a Tasker task when a new photo appears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOJABTNgf04

Of course, if you see this as a challenge to take on your own, program it! 💪🏻

[ippocratis]

There is also foldersync, another paid sync app that is also great
The free version has all features available but with adds
It supports many cloud providers for sync and many sync protocols
bidirectional or one directional sync is available ,WebDAV mtls supported and most important auto sync is available

https://foldersync.io/docs/help/quickstart/#configure-folderpair

For multiple photo folder imao dcim and pictures folders will cover 99% of the apps that store images/videos on the device

I will definitely try the fork though if take the fork route

:-)

[MiSebCo]

Would it be possible to have the app as a target that images can be shared to (e.g. from the album app to the gallery app)? As a simple way to upload an image to photoprism (no sync) without any further checks. Thank you.

[Radiokot]

Can you please try connecting to https://demo.photoprism.app and uploading something there?

[MiSebCo]

This worked. I downloaded the picture from Oct 7 2018 from the demo server and uploaded it again via the sharing feature. The app confirmed success - I could not see the uploaded picture in the library, however. Maybe because it already was in the library.

[Radiokot]

Thanks for checking it, Michael. It seems that upload fails with password-protected libraries. Will publish a fix soon.

[Radiokot]

Here it is:
https://github.com/Radiokot/photoprism-android-client/releases/tag/1.28.1(43)
Sorry for the inconvenience, it was an obvious mistake 🙄

[MiSebCo]

Yes - it works now. Great. Thank you! This makes uploading so simple and intuitive - especially for people being used to this workflow from other apps. Perfect.

[jrstrunk]

If anyone does want to take on the challenge of programming a native photo sync functionality, the NextCloud Android app has sync implemented well and is open source. Here is a place you could get started: https://github.com/nextcloud/android/blob/master/app/src/main/java/com/nextcloud/client/jobs/FilesSyncWork.kt

[neon12345]

I have a simple upload and sync client/server implementation here.

• only host, port, password and optional sync folder options
• aes encryption
• each request creates a new unique root directory => no override on upload
• server sha256 file cache to prevent duplicate uploads
• share files with the app or upload the sync directory.

I do not plan to release this as an official app myself.

Edit: The idea behind this approach is to make the upload "append data only" and manage/delete externally (e.g. photoprism web frontend). Host, port and password are the only information needed for uploads, which requires cooperation from the server but has less room for user errors.