Hi Pierrick,

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

1. You're absolutely right – GitHub is great for development and version control, but not ideal for user installation. I'll look into submitting the plugin to the official extensions repository at piwigo.org/ext soon. I just wanted to get some early feedback and test it a bit further first before publishing it more broadly.

2. Yes, that’s a valid point and one that has been discussed among lawyers and developers. While there is some debate about whether permissive licenses like MIT are strictly compatible with GPL-2.0, in this case the plugin is interpreted (PHP), not compiled, and simply interacts with the GPL-licensed core rather than linking against it in a compiled sense. But anyhow, I’ve addressed this directly in the license notice in the plugin, and explicitly clarified that from my point of view, it’s intended to be compatible with GPL-2.0 projects. So feel free to treat it as such or relicense it under GPL-2.0 if needed for integration or redistribution.

Thanks again, and best regards
Hendrik

rw22mhhs wrote:

2. Yes, that’s a valid point and one that has been discussed among lawyers and developers. While there is some debate about whether permissive licenses like MIT are strictly compatible with GPL-2.0, in this case the plugin is interpreted (PHP), not compiled, and simply interacts with the GPL-licensed core rather than linking against it in a compiled sense. But anyhow, I’ve addressed this directly in the license notice in the plugin, and explicitly clarified that from my point of view, it’s intended to be compatible with GPL-2.0 projects. So feel free to treat it as such or relicense it under GPL-2.0 if needed for integration or redistribution.

In practice I would say: let's look at what Wordpress does. If there are plugin under a licence different from GPLv2 (Wordpress is still GPLv2, right?) then I guess it's OK to have the same for Piwigo. The way Piwigo plugins works is perfectly comparable to Wordpress plugins.

I tried installing the plugin on my test Piwigo site but it won't show up under inactive plugins. I've checked permissions, etc. and everything looks good so not sure why I cannot see it.

I had the same issue with 0.1.1. But what I figured out is I had to rename the folder under plugins so it was just AlbumPilot and not AlbumPilot-0.1.1 and then it showed up under inactive plugins. Weird.

Hi everyone,

Just a quick update:

I've just released version 0.2.0 of AlbumPilot, my plugin for batch-processing Piwigo maintenance and sync tasks.

This version includes several major improvements:

You can now launch synchronizations externally via URL, e.g. from a batch script or scheduled task

The plugin no longer depends on a specific folder name (the previous install issue should be resolved)

The execution order of steps has been improved, with checksums now calculated before metadata updates

Language loading has been optimized to reduce page weight

A cosmetic issue with stray bullet characters in the log output was fixed

The full changelog and release notes are available here: https://github.com/HendrikSchoettle/AlbumPilot

I'd like to submit this version to the official Piwigo plugin directory soon. But before that, it would be great to have more users test it on different setups.

If you've tried it already, or are willing to give it a spin, I'd really appreciate any feedback, especially about compatibility, missing features, or edge cases I may not have covered.

Thanks again to everyone who's already shared thoughts or tried earlier versions!

Best,
Hendrik

Hi windracer,

Thanks so much for testing, and I’m glad to hear AlbumPilot is already helping streamline your workflow!

Step 5 (Metadata):
This step only reads metadata from the image files into the database (EXIF, IPTC, etc.). It does not write anything back into the files. So it’s similar to the “Refresh Metadata” action in Piwigo’s Batch Manager, not the “Write Metadata” plugin you mentioned.

Steps 7-10 (Maintenance):
You're absolutely right, these aren’t part of the default Piwigo sync flow, and for many users, they might not be necessary every time.

However, I included them based on my own experience:

Step 7 ("Update album info") is essential in my setup. New albums are created automatically on the server simply by creating and uploading new folders, and I’ve found they often don’t show up properly in the UI or album selection lists until I run this step.

For the other steps (8-10), I occasionally ran into database inconsistencies which were resolved by these maintenance tools.

Since these steps are fast and low-impact, I decided to offer them in AlbumPilot so users can optionally include them as a safety net in their workflow. My hope is that running them regularly doesn’t hurt, and in some cases can silently fix small issues before they become visible problems.

Feature request (Album selector):
That’s a great idea. The searchable dropdown from Batch Manager would definitely improve usability, especially for users with many nested albums. I’ll look into implementing it. I can’t promise a date yet, but I’ll try to include it in one of the next updates.

Scanning all albums:
As for scanning all albums at once – this should already be possible by selecting the root folder. At least in my installation, the top-most folder in the list represents the root and triggers a full recursive sync. If that doesn't work as expected in your setup, let me know and I’ll double-check the logic.

To everyone else: Feel free to test AlbumPilot and let me know how it works for you. Bug reports, feature requests, and suggestions are very welcome. Once I feel it’s reasonably stable and tested across more setups, I’ll be happy to submit it as an official plugin on piwigo.org/extensions.

Thanks again,
Hendrik

I guess I didn't realize that Steps 2 and 3 operate on the entire album and not just the newly added photos. Looks like I have a LOT of thumbnails that need to be generated, but ran into this error:

 Invalid response (not valid JSON):
{"processed":1,"generated":1,"offset":1,"done":false,"total":65251,"log":["\ud83d\udd0d Scanning for missing thumbnails...","\u26d4 Invalid image dimensions in DB for ID 68536 (.\/galleries\/events\/sporting-events\/guardians\/IMG_2620.JPG) \u2013 width\/height missing","\u26d4 Invalid image dimensions in DB for ID 73559 (.\/galleries\/places\/washington\/seattle\/IMG_9588.heic.JPEG) \u2013 width\/height missing","\u26d4 Invalid image dimensions in DB for ID 73560 (.\/galleries\/places\/washington\/seattle\/IMG_9590.heic.JPEG) \u2013 width\/height missing","\u26d4 Invalid image dimensions in DB for ID 73561 (.\/galleries\/places\/washington\/seattle\/IMG_9618.heic.JPEG) \u2013 width\/height missing","\u26d4 Invalid image dimensions in DB for ID 73562 (.\/galleries\/places\/washington\/seattle\/IMG_9621.heic.JPEG) \u2013 width\/height missing","\ud83e\uddee Total thumbnails to generate: 65251",{"type":"progress","step":"thumbnail","index":1,"total":65251,"percent":0,"image_id":"1","simulate":false,"path":".\/galleries\/events\/Go-Karting\/IMG_0344.JPG","thumb_type":"thumb"}],"summary":""}

Fatal error:  Uncaught mysqli_sql_exception: Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes in /usr/local/piwigo/include/dblayer/functions_mysqli.inc.php:132
Stack trace:
#0 /usr/local/piwigo/include/dblayer/functions_mysqli.inc.php(132): mysqli->query()
#1 /usr/local/piwigo/include/functions_session.inc.php(161): pwg_query()
#2 /usr/local/piwigo/include/pwgsession.class.php(21): pwg_session_write()
#3 [internal function]: PwgSession->write()
#4 [internal function]: session_write_close()
#5 {main}
  thrown in /usr/local/piwigo/include/dblayer/functions_mysqli.inc.php on line 132

Also got a few of these during video thumbnail generation:

? Poster could not be processed – invalid or corrupt JPEG: ././galleries/people/amy/2021/2021-07/italy-abroad/2021-07-20 Praiano, Italy (Jul 20-25)/pwg_representative/IMG_0004.MP4.jpg
? Poster could not be processed – invalid or corrupt JPEG: ././galleries/people/amy/2021/2021-07/spain-abroad/2021-07-01 Trujillo (Jul 1 - Jul 2) and Salvatierra de Santiago/pwg_representative/capture-1625132571.006397.MP4.jpg
? Poster could not be processed – invalid or corrupt JPEG: ././galleries/people/amy/2021/2021-07/spain-abroad/2021-07-03 Cadiz (Jul 3-7)/pwg_representative/IMG_3687.MP4.jpg
? Poster could not be processed – invalid or corrupt JPEG: ././galleries/people/amy/2021/2021-07/spain-abroad/2021-07-08 Sevilla (Jul 8-10)/pwg_representative/IMG_4038.MP4.jpg

I'll need to check on those images I guess ...

Last edited by windracer (2025-06-08 22:14:02)