Import images from a text list of URLs

[laurent32]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a way to automatically import images in photo from a text list of URLs… just like the title says !

And even more, I wish I could mix that within a macro to (for example) export all the files with a given width and a new computed name.

Also, I think I could do that with macOS shortcuts app but I've never used it so… if someone could help… I'd be very grateful !

Thanks

Edit : it might also be done with a small python routine ???

[v_kyr]

Well here (for me) some of the needed preconditions are not clearly defined in their meanings ...

1. Import - So just opening several images in/as own APh documents, or instead placing images into one and the same document?
2. URLs - Their location, are those URLs pointing to the local file system, or do they have instead to be some from the internet to be accessed (aka downloadable first) images?

BTW, if it's overall just in order to have a list of some files to open, resize their width or height to a given size and then resave them under a new name, then one don't need any Affinity product at all here to do so. As it would be more of an unnecessary hassle (too cumbersome, inefficient) trying to do this with Affinity.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, laurent32 said:

And even more, I wish I could mix that within a macro to (for example) export all the files with a given width and a new computed name.

You cannot do that with macros.

Are you asking a question ("Can I do this?")? Or are you making a request to add these functions? If you're making a request, you need to do that in the Feedback section of the forum, as that's where the Serif planners look for them,.

 

[laurent32]

@v_kyr

Hi, sorry for being unclear, yes I meant opening as standalone documents (if I have 100 URLs then I'll get 100 photo files) and yes I meant web URLs pointing to jpg files (or other formats) that are downloadable. I agree that for plenty of file it might be better to have a python routine but I don't know how to create that routine…

@walt.farrell

Hi, yes I'm asking if I can already do that right now, and if not, yes I'll ask for some feature request because I'm missing that feature. I wish we could open a file via it's link on the web.

Thanks both for answering.

[David in Яuislip]

You can use urls in New stack or New batch job dialogs but they need to be added one at a time
So with a text file open you could cut each row and paste it into Affinity. 100 files is doable, I'd baulk at 1000
I'd sooner wrie a Python script to download them but if you're unable to do that the above is an idea

[v_kyr]

Well some Python script can do all of that, though you would have to more clearly specifiy how the text file should overall look like, since there are different possibilities here to handle URLs from text files.

For example, let's say we're having the following text in a file "text.txt" ...

Quote

Nowadays you can learn almost anything about Affinity software by just visiting https://forum.affinity.serif.com  .
But if you are completely new to computers or internet then first you need to learn those fundamentals. Next
you can visit a good Affinity e-learning site like - https://affinityspotlight.com to learn further on a variety of 
Affinity subjects.

... then the following used regexp in an Python script ...

import re
 
with open("text.txt") as file:
        for line in file:
            urls = re.findall('https?://(?:[-\w.]|(?:%[\da-fA-F]{2}))+', line)
            print(urls)

... when executed (> python3 geturl.py test.txt) will get/match the URLs and print them out ...

['https://forum.affinity.serif.com']
['https://affinityspotlight.com']

BUT if you are going to make a text based control file something like a simple CSV like text file might here be more suitable, like for example ...

Quote

# URL; NEW WIDTH SIZE; NEWFILENAME
https://whereever.com/image1.png; 800; myimage1.png
https://whereever.com/image5.png; 1024; myimage2.png
...

... that would also be easy to read/parse, handle and perform within a Python script.

And fetching and holding some image via an given URL in Python (for further processing) could be as easy as ...

from PIL import Image
import requests

im = Image.open(requests.get(url, stream=True).raw)

... the above oneliner fetches an image from a given URL and holds that inside an "im" image variable. So you can do now something with that image like resizing it etc. And at the end of your "im" image manipulation you would write that image back to disk under/as some new name.

So the overall steps to take in/with Py here are ...

1. Define yourself some suitable text control file structure
2. Parse/read that text control file with Py, looping over it line for line in order to get/hold each line entry (the URL, new width value, new file name text) ...
3. With the on the fly got line column entries perform the needed operations, aka fetch/download the URL as an image, resize that fetched image, save the modified image under some new name
4. ... whatever else you want or need to do here.

[laurent32]

43 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

https://whereever.com/image1.png; 800; myimage1.png
https://whereever.com/image5.png; 1024; myimage2.png

That's exactly were I am, I exported my csv file from Filemaker and now I'd want to go to the next step…

My son is on holiday right now, but I'm sure he will build or find some little python code for me…

That's why I was looking for any other ideas…

[laurent32]

1 hour ago, David in Яuislip said:

You can use urls in New stack or New batch job dialogs but they need to be added one at a time
So with a text file open you could cut each row and paste it into Affinity. 100 files is doable, I'd baulk at 1000

I didn't know about stack, I'll look after that too.

Now, I regularly get much more then 100, that's why I must find a good solution…

Thanks for your answer.

[v_kyr]

5 hours ago, laurent32 said:

That's exactly were I am, I exported my csv file from Filemaker and now I'd want to go to the next step…

My son is on holiday right now, but I'm sure he will build or find some little python code for me…

That's why I was looking for any other ideas…

Ok found some 10 minutes spare left time for this, in order to look how to quickly maybe do that with some Python 3 script which takes the values from a CSV file then.

Actually a CSV to use has to be setup like this, aka ...

--> the_url;width;save_filename

... though you can change that in the Python code to some other CSV delimiter char, or instead also pass the delimiter char to use over as an argument too (you have then to change/add argparse code for the later, passing over the CSV delimiter as an argument) ...

https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/07/18/20/26/sea-164989_960_720.jpg;800;image1.jpg
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2018/08/14/13/23/ocean-3605547_960_720.jpg;600;image2.jpg
https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/02/21/19/06/drink-84533_960_720.jpg;600;image3.jpg

... you have to make sure that the initial fetched images are size-wise big enough when resized for the width here, as the used Python module "resizeimage" will otherwise complain about that when running the script!

For this common Python 3 script to work, your Python 3 installment will have to use some third-party modules (argparse, PIL/PILLOW, resizeimage ...). Thus you would have to install those first here into your Python 3 environment, in case or if they are not already installed there ...

• pip install argparse
• pip install Pillow
• pip install python-resize-image
• pip install requests

 

Here's a short Python 3 script which should do what you're after (as far as I understood your needs) ...

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import argparse
import csv
from PIL import Image
from resizeimage import resizeimage
import requests


def perform_csv_row(row):
    # This function gets the values (url, width, filename) from a CSV row and then
    # - fetches the URL as an image
    # - sizes the image proportional to the given width
    # - saves the resulting image under a given new name

    the_url = row[0]
    the_width = int(row[1])
    the_name = row[2]

    image = Image.open(requests.get(the_url, stream=True).raw)
    the_image = resizeimage.resize_width(image, the_width)
    the_image.save(the_name, image.format)


# Create an  argument parser
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
# Add an argument
parser.add_argument('--csvfilename', type=str, required=True)
# Parse the argument
args = parser.parse_args()

with open(args.csvfilename, 'r') as file:
    csvreader = csv.reader(file, delimiter=';')
    for row in csvreader:
        perform_csv_row(row)

You would call that py script from a MacOS cmd shell (iTerm2.app or the MacOS supplied Terminal.app) the following way ...

Quote

> python3 proc_image_urls.py --csvfilename test.csv

Here are the short Python 3 script and a little test.csv file ...

• proc_image_urls.py
• test.csv

 

[carl123]

16 hours ago, laurent32 said:

Now, I regularly get much more then 100, that's why I must find a good solution…

Many utilities/programs can download a list of image URLs to a folder.

Once downloaded you can process all the images to .afphoto format using APhoto's batch job and also specify the file size and use any macros you want

 

If you have to do this regularly just find a utility/program to first copy all images URLs to a folder. It's probably the easiest way to do this

[David in Яuislip]

Here's my contribution for forum members that have the same need
Place the python file into a new folder, add ImageList.txt containing the image urls, one per line, no quotes
Run ImageURLs.py
Then use Photo to process the files
Of course Python can be used to manipulate the image but that's outwith the scope of this forum
Use, abuse, modify or ignore 🙂

ImageURLs.py

[laurent32]

14 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Ok found some 10 minutes spare left time for this, in order to look how to quickly maybe do that with some Python 3 script which takes the values from a CSV file then.

I'm so grateful, thanks @v_kyr

I'm going to have it a go right now !!

[laurent32]

2 hours ago, carl123 said:

Many utilities/programs can download a list of image URLs to a folder

Thanks @carl123 , are you on Mac or Windows ?

Can you share some names ?

2 hours ago, carl123 said:

If you have to do this regularly just find a utility/program to first copy all images URLs to a folder. It's probably the easiest way to do this

I think so too, @v_kyr just gave me some code that I'm going to use right now…

[laurent32]

57 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

Use, abuse, modify or ignore 🙂

Thanks @David in Яuislip !!

[laurent32]

You guys are great !!!

[carl123]

44 minutes ago, laurent32 said:

Thanks @carl123 , are you on Mac or Windows ?

Can you share some names ?

 

Sorry, I'm on Windows, don't know any for mac

[v_kyr]

5 hours ago, laurent32 said:

Can you share some names ?

Well on any Unix based and even for Win based systems, there's "Wget" ...

• Gnu Wget
• Gnu Wget manual
• Wget man page
• MacOS Install wget network downloader utility
• Windows binaries of GNU Wget 1.21.3

... which has advantages over GUI based frontends/tools here, as it can be (re)used in any batch/shell/script languages.

For Win based systems the MS Powershell has/offers it's own alternatives to Wget like for example Invoke-WebRequest!

There are of course also GUI frontends to Wget and similar GUI tools ...

• AWGG
• Progressive Downloader (MacOS)
• WebUI-Aria2
• VisualWGet (Win)
• WinWGet     (Win)
• ... and so on ...