Watch a Folder and Upload New Files To Picasa

The bash script below will watch the PicasaWeb folder in your home directory for new files. When a new image is dropped in the folder it is uploaded to Picasa. After the upload is complete the script launches your browser to the direct URL of the uploaded photo. If you want, copy the URL in an email, dent, or tweet.

Updated Dec 4, 2010 - Now checks Google CL version so it will work in Ubuntu 11.04.

#!/bin/sh
# Blog post: http://platechnotes.patrickarchibald.com/2010/09/watch-folder-and-upload-new-files-to.html
# 1. Watch ~/PicasaWeb folder. 
# 2. Upload new file to Picasa using Google CLI. 
# 3. Launch the browser to the direct Picasa URL. 
# 
WATCHED_DIR=~/PicasaWeb
googleVersion=$(google --version)
echo $googleVersion
while [ 1 ]
do
  echo 'Watching directory: '$WATCHED_DIR 'for new files'
  while file=$(inotifywait -q -e create "$WATCHED_DIR" --format "%f")
  do
    echo 'New file to upload to PicasaWeb:' $file
    notify-send -i "gtk-go-up" "Picasa Web Monitor" "Uploading image $file"
    mythtvosd --template=alert --alert_text="Uploading image $file"
    google picasa post --title "Drop Box" "$WATCHED_DIR/$file"
    if [ "$googleVersion" = "google 0.9.5" ]; then
     url=$(google picasa list url-direct --title "Drop Box" | grep "$file" | sed -e "s/$file\,//g")
    else 
     url=$(google picasa list --fields url-direct --title "Drop Box" | grep "$file" | sed -e "s/$file\,//g")
    fi
    echo 'Picasa url: ' $url
    notify-send -i "gtk-home" "Picasa Web Monitor" "Image uploaded. Starting Gwibber widget."
    mythtvosd --template=alert --alert_text="Image uploaded. Starting Gwibber widget."
    python ~/Ubuntu\ One/scripts/gwibber-widget.py $url
  done
done

Prerequisites and Instructions

• You should be running Linux. I am using Ubuntu
• You need the command inotifywait. On Ubuntu I installed it via sudo apt-get install inotify-tools
• You must have a Picasa account
• Install libnotify-bin for the notify-send command
• Install Google CLI
• Create a Picasa web folder called "Drop Box"
• Create "PicasaWeb" folder in your home directory mkdir ~/PicasaWeb
• Copy and paste my bash script above into a file. I named mine PicasaWebMonitor.sh.
• Make PicasaWebMonitor.sh executable chmod +x PicasaWebMonitor.sh
• Start the bash script ./PicasaWebMonitor.sh.
• Create some images and save them to the ~/PicasaWeb folder
• Avoid using spaces and special characters in your picture file names. The Picasa Web direct URL will be encoded and won't match your file name. The grep statement will fail to show you the direct URL.

Let me know if you find any bugs in this script or if there is a better way to do it.