Bulk Download of photos from an AirTable?

[David_Laufer]

Is there a way to do a mass download of photos from my airtable? The Bulk Upload worked well, now I need to do the reverse! Thanks, All

[Josh_Doyle]

@Bill.French I’d love to learn more about your scripting solution. I tried using a Zap but it’s only copying 1 image from Airtable to my Google Drive. My goal is to be able to copy over multiple images to Drive from a selected Airtable view. Thank you!

[Sloth_Outfitter]

@Pete, when I do a mass checking of all the records following your steps, it does not work. It seems I have to manually click each checkbox individually for the Zap to recognize. Is this a known issue? I’ve seen this happen before and now I think it must be a limitation.

[Bill_French]

Josh_Doyle:

I’d love to learn more about your scripting solution.

I don’t have a scripting solution; I shared only an approach that worked and required some carefully-written script automation and a target storage service.

In the case where I commented, I used Google Apps Script and Firebase (as the data store) because the client needed a vast object store with real-time access that was receiving files from more than simply Airtable. Critical to this process was the ability to prime the datastore of images and then also maintain it in real-time. As such and given this was pre event-actions supported by Airtable, a script process reviews Airtable every five minutes looking for new images to sync into the Firebase datastore. This can be handled with greater elegance from event actions in Airtable now.

Josh_Doyle:

I tried using a Zap but it’s only copying 1 image from Airtable to my Google Drive.

I don’t believe Zapier has the notion of recognizing multiple attachments in a single field. I suspect that Integromat does (@ScottWorld might know).

Josh_Doyle:

My goal is to be able to copy over multiple images to Drive from a selected Airtable view.

And by use of the term “selected”, are you implying that this will be (or could optimally be) manually driven from Airtable itself? If so, you should entertain a script block that would allow users to select the view and run the process. The challenge that will face you is there is no magical way to create a file in Google Drive without using the Drive SDK, a complicated and costly proposition and especially the case if I’m asked to build it.

I would look at Integromat or miniExtensions.

[ScottWorld]

Bill.French:

I don’t believe Zapier has the notion of recognizing multiple attachments in a single field. I suspect that Integromat does (@ScottWorld might know).

Yes, Integromat can easily iterate through multiple attachments in a single field, and then take actions on each one of those attachments separately.

Zapier is nowhere near as advanced as Integromat as a platform, and it doesn’t even have full Airtable support. Integromat has 100% full Airtable support. Personally, I would never recommend Zapier to anyone, unless it was a last resort if they had native support for some app that Integromat didn’t support.

I am a professional Airtable consultant and a Registered Integromat Partner. If you have a budget for your project and need to hire a consultant to help you out, feel free to contact me through my website at scottworld.com. (The Integromat link above contains my personal referral code.)

[openside]

Hi @Josh_Doyle - another option is using our On2Air: Backups product to backup to Google Drive. It will incrementally push any new attachments from any table configured on a scheduled basis. Depending on the tier, it can go as often as hourly to check for new attachments.

[ScottWorld]

openside:

another option is using our On2Air: Backups product to backup to Google Drive. It will incrementally push any new attachments from any table configured on a scheduled basis.

Oooh, that’s a very cool feature to know about! And the On2Air: Backups product does so much more, too, since it is a comprehensive backup solution.

Oh, and speaking of On2Air products, you can get significantly deeper Airtable support within Zapier by adding in another On2Air product: On2Air: Actions.

[Josh_Doyle]

Thank you @Bill.French for the Integromat idea and for tagging @ScottWorld for verification.
Scott, I really appreciate the tips. I used your referral link to sign up for a trial to see if it solves my problems. If I can’t then I’ll reach out for some pro support from ya. Thanks again!

[Orun_Bhuiyan]

I did it in 2 minutes with no 3rd party tooling, just the shell/terminal.

This works because it seems you don’t need to be authenticated to get files. Tested this in MacOS and should be fine for any *nix.

Steps

1. Copy the whole column of images you want (or multi select the ones you want and copy to clipboard) and paste into a file, for example, sources.txt

2. You’ll have to grab the URLs in the parentheses, which easy with sed, just run
   sed -i "" "s/.*(\(.*\))/\1/" sources.txt

3. Now wget your way through the file:
   xargs < wget <sources.txt

Notes

• This will download all the files to the current folder. You can also specific the folder you want with -P for wget. Like xargs < wget -P ~/Desktop/images <sources.txt

• If you don’t want to use wget, you can use curl

• Instead of step 2, you can just use your code editor to grab the context within the parentheses

[Bill_French]

Orun_Bhuiyan:

I did it in 2 minutes with no 3rd party tooling, just the shell/terminal.

It’s certainly a “no-code” approach. :winking_face:

[ScottWorld]

Orun_Bhuiyan:

I did it in 2 minutes with no 3rd party tooling, just the shell/terminal.

You lost me at step #2. I even tried to do it, too.

Just an FYI that this is not a UNIX programming community. This is a community which is primarily made up of no-coders and low-coders.

(Update: I finally got step #2 to work, but I couldn’t get step #3 to work.)