Sync Your Flickr Photosets With Your iPod

One of the main reasons I wrote the Fleakr gem was to pull down my latest photosets from Flickr and sync them with my iPod. To get started, create a directory that you'll use to store all your sets:

$ mkdir /tmp/flickr

Connect your iPod, open iTunes, and navigate to the "Photos" configuration tab. Select the option to sync photos from a local directory (first checkbox) and choose the directory you just created (/tmp/flickr):

To download your latest set, you can use this code. Go ahead and name this file 'flickr-download', but make sure to install the fleakr gem first:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'fleakr'

Fleakr.api_key = 'sekrit'

user = 'the decapitator'
target_dir = '/tmp/flickr'

Fleakr.user(user).sets.first.save_to(target_dir, :medium)

Once this file is saved, make it executable and run it:

$ chmod +x flickr-download
$ ./flickr-download

Once your script completes, you'll have the latest photoset saved to your target directory:

$ ls -F /tmp/flickr/
The Decapitator/
$ ls -1 /tmp/flickr/The\ Decapitator/
01_2117922283_715587b2cb.jpg
02_2125604584_9c09348fd6.jpg
03_2118696542_8af5763bde.jpg
04_2146369495_e266cf3c18.jpg
05_2146384313_a8dbfb589c.jpg
...

You'll notice that each file is prefixed with a series of digits - this is used to preserve the original order of the photos in the set. Otherwise your photos would display in a seemingly random order when played as a slideshow on your iPod.

That's it! Your photos will now be available on your iPod after the next synchronization. If you want to retrieve other sizes, you can specify that size in place of where I put :medium above. See the documentation for all available sizes.

You can run this script each time you add a new set to your Flickr photostream, or even schedule it to be run periodically using cron or a tool like Lingon.