Mass uploading and PP's Picture selection

[DefenceTalk.com]

Okay so, we upload a lot of mass uploads through FTP and URL but it is always very annoying when Photopost randomly picks the pictures from the source rather than following some squence or pattern which is easier to follow as far as putting description and titles in the bulk upload page....

Say if FTP directory has these files:


Picture1
picture2
picture3
picture4

so on...

It would be nice if PP also follows the pattern in displaying the pictures in that format so
picture1
picture2
picture3
so on...

would also show up in the list like that... instead of random picture from the directory!

And for URL uploads, why not start from TOP of the page and follow down? Or start from bottom and follow up? Not randomly cherry pick pictures?

Any ideas? Solutions?

[Chuck S]

I do not beleive there is anything in Photopost that randomly processes pictures we should process a directory from lower to high number then low to high alphabetical be default I beleive and processing a url it should read img tags from top to bottom I beleive

[DefenceTalk.com]

Originally Posted by Chuck S

I do not beleive there is anything in Photopost that randomly processes pictures we should process a directory from lower to high number then low to high alphabetical be default I beleive and processing a url it should read img tags from top to bottom I beleive

Well, over 17,000 pictures and never would it take the pictures alphabetically or from TOP to bottom.... we end up scrolling the URL page many many many times to find the picture that is PP has in the bulk upload, etc. It does not do top to bottom from URL and it does not do low to high or alphabetically when uploading from FTP, that is why it is so annoying.

Fearing that you may be right, I just did a test through FTP directory upload and it does not do low to high or high to low pattern. Instead it does this:

Directory has files with names like

filename-121
filename-122
filename-123

all the way down to 130 only difference being the last digit... so what pp does it display filename-129 first then filename-122 then filename-128 then filename-124 and so on... no pattern.

Earlier did few URL upload tests and same thing, gets the pictures from all over the page rather than top to bottom.

[DefenceTalk.com]

Any solution for this?

Even tried it on the latest and version before the current version.... no luck.

[Chuck S]

How is your server sorting the images?

I think this would be your issue. I think we are just going to grab and process images as we see them on disk

[DefenceTalk.com]

I don't know how its sorting it...how do i check and how do i make sure it does it by the name?

Also, what about the uploading from URL... it doesn't do it from top of the page to bottom.

Thanks

[Chuck S]

I will ask Michael but from what I see we just scan and process. You know you can order photos in a category as you choose?

[DefenceTalk.com]

Thanks.

I know about various options available in the category sorting but... thats AFTER the uploads are done.

So my request for PP dev Team:

When uploading through URL, I would like to see PP do TOP of the page to BOTTOM and not do random or cherry pick photos from all over the page.

When uploading through FTP, have some order, please no random stuff.

That is all I ask.

Thank you.

[Chuck S]

We use very simple php commands by example here when processing bulkuploads. It will read usually from the first file in that directory and process till it reaches the last.

Content visible to verified customers only.

You can view what opendir and readdir is on the PHP site but basically I don't really see what else we can do. If you want a specific order to display pictures in you can as I pointed out sort them when viewing the category and set the display order.

[DefenceTalk.com]

Okay fair enough.

Anybody know how I can check what is the default file sort policy on the linux server?

Chuck, any idea on the URL uploads?

Thank You.

[Michael P]

Why not just set the default sort order for the category to "Alphabetical"? That's what I do.

[DefenceTalk.com]

The pictures in the categories already is not the problem. I know, there are different options available to sort the pictures AFTER they are uploaded and displayed in the categories.

The problem seems to be random display of pictures in the list when bulkuploading.... is that also controlled by the category sort option?

Thanks

[Chuck S]

I think what Michael is stating is the other side of the coin on picture display order is achieved. You can use a sort as he states or you can do the explicit set a sort order as I described to override any sort

I guess what we dont see if why your singling out the display of the preview thumbnails sort order on bulkupload. They are not affected by any sort. They are uploaded as noted by simple reading a directory and processing files in order they are found. Same thing does reading an html file. we should go down the file and read every img src tag and grab images. How the server is interpreting the sort order of the directory when we read it I can not say.

[Michael P]

As Chuck pointed out, we use readdir() to get the next X photos from a directory; if you wanted to sort that list you would need to read all of the photos into an array, sort the array and then pick X photos from the top of the array.

[DefenceTalk.com]

I guess what we dont see if why your singling out the display of the preview thumbnails sort order on bulkupload. They are not affected by any sort. They are uploaded as noted by simple reading a directory and processing files in order they are found. Same thing does reading an html file. we should go down the file and read every img src tag and grab images. How the server is interpreting the sort order of the directory when we read it I can not say.

Well... I can understand that FTP bulkuploads may be affected by the directory sort on the server but what about URL?

I mean, try it. Try uploading from a URL (usually vbulletin thread pages) and it does not go top to bottom when displaying the thumbnails on the bulk uploads... maybe its user error?

[Chuck S]

well threads from some PHP program I cant say its all dynamic and may be affected by program sorts different from guests and logged in users. Just an idea there

[Michael P]

Concerning parsing a URL, the files are extracted and placed into your uploads directory and then processed by bulkupload separately.

Again, bulkupload isn't sorting any list - it's just reading the files from the uploads directory via readdir().

[DefenceTalk.com]

extracted and placed into your uploads directory and then processed by bulkupload separately.

Does it extract from top of the page to bottom or just grabs and go?

[Michael P]

I've never gotten that granular in checking to see what order photos were taken from a page because it really isn't significant. It parses an html page for img src tags and then tries to grab them and places them in the uploads directory before forwarding over to bulkupload for processing.

[DefenceTalk.com]

I checked the server and it seems the files are sorted from lower number to higher number so

filename-121
filename-122
filename-123

Would be the order ON THE SERVER but still PP would not process them as they are sorted on the server.... anybody else with this problem? lol