cdzombak/flickr-exporter repository overview

⁠flickr-exporter

A command-line tool to download and archive your Flickr photos with metadata preservation.

⁠Features

• Download all photos from your Flickr account
• Download specific albums (photosets) or collections
• Preserve photo metadata (title, description, tags) as EXIF/IPTC data
• Automatic organization by album with date prefixes
• Resume support - skip already downloaded photos
• Concurrent downloads for faster performance
• OAuth authentication with secure credential storage
• Respects Flickr's rate limits with automatic retry logic
• Downloads photos in their original resolution
• Failed downloads are reported at the end of the process

⁠Requirements & Building

⁠Requirements

• Go 1.16 or later
• ExifTool (for metadata writing)
  • macOS: brew install exiftool
  • Linux: sudo apt-get install libimage-exiftool-perl
  • Windows: Download from https://exiftool.org⁠

⁠Building

go build -o flickr-exporter

⁠Usage

⁠Authentication

Before using flickr-exporter, you need to authenticate with Flickr:

1. Get Flickr API credentials:

   • Go to https://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/⁠
   • Choose "Apply for a Non-Commercial Key"
   • Fill out the application form
   • Save your API Key and Secret

2. Authenticate flickr-exporter:

   ./flickr-exporter auth -k YOUR_API_KEY -s YOUR_API_SECRET
   

   Copy
   • This will open your browser to authorize the application
   • Follow the prompts to save your credentials to a file (e.g., creds.yml)
   • You only need to do this once

⁠Download Options

⁠Download All Photos

Downloads all photos from your account, organized by album:

./flickr-exporter -c creds.yml all -o /path/to/output/directory

Photos not in any album will be saved to an "Unorganized Photos" folder.

⁠Download a Specific Album

./flickr-exporter -c creds.yml album ALBUM_ID -o /path/to/output/directory

To find album IDs:

1. Go to your album on Flickr
2. The URL will be like https://www.flickr.com/photos/yourusername/albums/72157694563874100
3. The album ID is the number at the end (e.g., 72157694563874100)

⁠Download a Collection

./flickr-exporter -c creds.yml collection COLLECTION_ID -o /path/to/output/directory

⁠Additional Options

• -c, --creds: Path to credentials file (recommended)
• -v, --verbose: Enable verbose output to see detailed progress
• -o, --output: Specify output directory (default: current directory)

⁠Output Structure

Photos are organized as follows:

output-directory/
├── 2023-01-15 Vacation Photos/
│   ├── IMG_001.jpg
│   ├── IMG_002.jpg
│   └── ...
├── 2023-02-20 Birthday Party/
│   └── ...
└── Unorganized Photos/
    └── ...

Albums are prefixed with their creation date in YYYY-MM-DD format for chronological sorting.

⁠Metadata Preservation

The following metadata is written to each downloaded photo:

IPTC Fields:

• ObjectName: Photo title
• Caption-Abstract: Photo description
• Keywords: Photo tags

XMP Fields:

• Subject: Photo tags (duplicate of IPTC Keywords for compatibility)

This metadata can be viewed in most photo management applications and is preserved when copying or backing up files.

⁠Examples

# Authenticate (one-time setup)
./flickr-exporter auth -k abc123 -s xyz789

# Save credentials to a file after authentication
# Follow the prompts to save to creds.yml

# Download all photos to Pictures folder
./flickr-exporter -c creds.yml all -o ~/Pictures/Flickr-Backup

# Download a specific album with verbose output
./flickr-exporter -c creds.yml album 72157694563874100 -o ~/Pictures -v

# Download photos from a collection
./flickr-exporter -c creds.yml collection 12345-67890 -o ~/Pictures/Collections

⁠Author

Claude wrote this code with management by Chris Dzombak (dzombak.com⁠ / github.com/cdzombak⁠).

⁠License

GNU GPL v3; see LICENSE⁠ in this repo.