Downloading duplicates

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jabbafat
Posts: 9
Joined: 12 Jun 2013, 17:49

Downloading duplicates

Post by jabbafat » 13 Jun 2013, 10:09

Hello,
I can't find the answer to this question elsewhere so any information would be gratefully received....
I have a text list with about 10,000 URLs. Many of the URLs appear more than once in the list. EPF ignores the duplicates even though I require the download multiple times (and then to be renamed sequentially for instance). Is there any way I can force EPF to download the images exactly as they are on the list rather than just ignoring the duplicates.
Thank you

Maksym
Site Admin
Posts: 2077
Joined: 02 Mar 2009, 17:02

Re: Downloading duplicates

Post by Maksym » 13 Jun 2013, 11:49

OK, I see the problem. But I don't understand why would you need to download the very same address again and again?

Anyway, I think it should work exactly the way you need. EPF is not supposed to skip starting addresses. Can you send me your file (or a part of it) to support@exisoftware.com for the tests?

jabbafat
Posts: 9
Joined: 12 Jun 2013, 17:49

Re: Downloading duplicates

Post by jabbafat » 13 Jun 2013, 12:27

Thanks for the fast reply.
I can see why it looks strange that I should want the same image repeatedly. I have list A and list B. List A has all the items I am trying to put an image against on a website. List B has the URLs of all the images which match the items in List A. Often the same image is used for more than 1 item. For instance a red t-shirt in large will use the same image as a red t-shirt in medium and smalll etc. However the protocol of the website means I have to upload a separate image for each item with a different name regardless of whether that exact same image is used for another item. Sounds (and is) ludicrous but it is what I have to work with I'm afraid.
Anyway, will send you a file and thanks for your help.

jabbafat
Posts: 9
Joined: 12 Jun 2013, 17:49

Re: Downloading duplicates

Post by jabbafat » 13 Jun 2013, 16:33

Thanks to the work and thought of Maxim my problem has been resolved perfectly in the following way:
To recap the issue
I had two lists. One list contained all the names of the items I wanted to have images of to put on a website. The other list contained all the URLs for the items in the first list. Because some of the items in the first list were just variations of an item eg large, medium, small etc the image required was the same. However the website the items/images were being uploaded to required that a fresh image with a new name be provided for each item. As an example: Red_T-shirt_Large.jpg, Red_T-shirt_Medium.jpg etc were exactly the same photo which had to be downloaded twice but named differently each time.

By default EPF will not duplicate the same URL twice. It will ignore the second and subsequent attempts to download an image.
To overcome this we concatenated 3 columns in a spreadsheet.
Column 1= image URL
Column 2= ?item=
Column 3= item name
So it looked something like this

Column 1....................................... Col2.. Column 3
http://www.clothes.com/Red_T-Shirt.jpg ?item= Red_T-shirt_Large.jpg
http://www.clothes.com/Red_T-Shirt.jpg ?item= Red_T-shirt_Medium.jpg
http://www.clothes.com/Red_T-Shirt.jpg ?item= Red_T-shirt_Small.jpg

As you can see the same image will be used three times to generate three differently named pictures.

Once concatenated we had these lines for a text file:

http://www.clothes.com/Red_T-Shirt.jpg? ... _Large.jpg
http://www.clothes.com/Red_T-Shirt.jpg? ... Medium.jpg
http://www.clothes.com/Red_T-Shirt.jpg? ... _Small.jpg

This file was used for EPF.
Then in the project settings "Save -> Naming" section we ticked the "Use query string for file name" option and ticked the "Use value of this parameter for file name" box. Then in the corresponding field we entered "item"

That's it. 5,000 different images downloaded giving an end product of 10,000 images all correctly renamed with no chance of human error. Hope this project helps someone else!

Thanks very much to Maxim for impeccable user support.

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