File Date Organizer for NodeJS

The following document applies to the command-line usage of file-date-organizer. For usage directly in a Node application, please see the alternate README located here.

Purpose

Locate files by date and move them into a date-based folder structure (ie .../YYYY/MM/dd/hh, etc.). Dates are extracted from the file name (ie Screen Shot 2020-05-28 at 10.16.59 AM.png) or the file properties (created date, modified date, etc.).

More info on why I created this is on my blog: https://fredlackey.com

Installation

npm i -g file-date-organizer

Usage

Exatract then date from the name of the file ...

file-date-organizer \
  --source "/Users/flackey/Documents/Screenshots" \
  --target "/Volumes/MPHD01/Screenshots" \
  --use-name \
  --move \
  --recursive \
  --overwrite

... or, use a file property, such as the creation date ...

file-date-organizer \
  --source "/Users/flackey/Documents/Screenshots" \
  --target "/Volumes/MPHD01/Screenshots" \
  --use-created \
  --move \
  --recursive \
  --overwrite

When I process images from my camera, I use both the --use-name switch as well as --use-created. This ensures files without a date in the name still get moved properly.

file-date-organizer \
  --source '/Users/flackey/pCloud Drive/Automatic Upload/' \
  --target /Volumes/MPHD01/Multimedia/Photos/ \
  --move \
  --use-name \
  --use-created \
  --recursive \
  --overwrite \
  --console

The addition of the --console switch adds an output which is helpful for long-running operations...

Important:
Combining --use-name and any other --use* option will cuase --use-name to be leveraged first. If a valid name can be found within the name then the properties of the file will be ignored.

Parameters

| Name | Description | Type | Default | |----------------|------------------------------------------|-----------------|---------| | source | Source Directory | string (path) | | | target | Desination Directory | string (path) | | | recursive | Locate files recursively | boolean | true | | overwrite | Overwrite existing target files | boolean | false | | ignore | Ignore existing target files | boolean | false | | copy | Copy the files | boolean | false | | move | Move the files | boolean | false | | use-name | Extract date from file name | boolean | false | | use-created | Use created date for target folder name | boolean | false | | use-modified | Use modified date for target folder name | boolean | false | | add-type | Target folder name includes file type | boolean | false | | add-year | Target folder name includes file year | boolean | true | | add-month | Target folder name includes file month | boolean | true | | add-day | Target folder name includes file day | boolean | true | | add-hour | Target folder name includes file hour | boolean | false | | add-minute | Target folder name includes file minute | boolean | false | | add-second | Target folder name includes file second | boolean | false | | console | Log activity to console | boolean | false | | limit | Number of files to process | number | | | allow-future | Allow file names with date in future | boolean | false |

Contact

Please feel free to contact me directly with any questions, comments, or enhancement requests:

Fred Lackey
[email protected]
http://fredlackey.com