Importing from Flickr without mangling tags?

dmd · November 28, 2011

I've been wanting to migrate from Flickr to Smugmug for several years now, but the lack of a usable migration tool has gotten in the way.

The problem with Smugglr is that it has a bug - it mangles tags because it uses the tag body instead of the raw property. This means that the tag "John Q. Public" on Flickr ends up as "johnqpublic" on SmugMug.

I have tens of thousands of family photos, dating back to the 19th century, each one painstakingly tagged via years of research. I really don't want all that work mangled.

This bug seems like it should be easily fixable... any suggestions?

rainforest1155 · November 28, 2011

Can you include a link to a sample photo on Flickr that you're having an issue with?

Did you also try the Migratr tool available from here?
http://www.callingshotgun.net/about/migratr/
Maybe it works better for your photos?

dmd · November 28, 2011

Sure, this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/3e/5099085311/
the tag gets transferred as 'danieldrucker' instead of 'Daniel Drucker'.

Migratr has the same problem.

dmd · November 28, 2011

The trouble with both programs is that they're grabbing the data by using flickr.photosets.getPhotos and requesting tags as an extra.

That gives a response like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rsp stat="ok">
  <photoset id="72157600005068570" primary="5099085311" owner="35034347215@N01" ownername="3e" page="1" per_page="500" perpage="500" pages="1" total="1">
    <photo id="5099085311" secret="72570530fe" server="1121" farm="2" title="Daniel's photos are private." isprimary="0" tags="me danieldrucker" />
  </photoset>
</rsp>

That uses the 'cooked' form of the tags.

To get the correct form of the tags, one needs to run flickr.photos.getInfo against each individual photo. That method gives a response like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rsp stat="ok">
  <photo id="5099085311" secret="72570530fe" server="1121" farm="2" dateuploaded="1287584582" isfavorite="0" license="0" safety_level="0" rotation="0" originalsecret="129213833e" originalformat="jpg" views="316" media="photo">
    <owner nsid="35034347215@N01" username="3e" realname="Daniel Drucker" location="Philadelphia, US" iconserver="1" iconfarm="1" />
    <title>Daniel's photos are private.</title>
    <description>My photos are visible to Friends and Family only.</description>
    <visibility ispublic="1" isfriend="0" isfamily="0" />
    <dates posted="1287584582" taken="2006-09-30 12:22:23" takengranularity="0" lastupdate="1304711668" />
    <editability cancomment="0" canaddmeta="0" />
    <publiceditability cancomment="1" canaddmeta="0" />
    <usage candownload="1" canblog="0" canprint="0" canshare="1" />
    <comments>0</comments>
    <notes />
    <people haspeople="0" />
    <tags>
      <tag id="5921-5099085311-864628" author="35034347215@N01" raw="Daniel Drucker" machine_tag="0">danieldrucker</tag>
      <tag id="5921-5099085311-731" author="35034347215@N01" raw="me" machine_tag="0">me</tag>
    </tags>
    <urls>
      <url type="photopage">http://www.flickr.com/photos/3e/5099085311/</url>
    </urls>
  </photo>
</rsp>

Note the 'raw' property which contains the correct version of the tag.

Importing from Flickr without mangling tags?

Comments