Batch-replace destination folders in existing download list

Technical support and discussion of Newsbin Version 6 series.

Batch-replace destination folders in existing download list

Postby Murphy » Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:14 am

Hello,

I have a really large download list, as I put everything in there that seems interesting to me. Sort of a wish list, and when I want to actually download something on it I just move it to the top of the list.
So there are lot of different destination folders in my existing download list (named by subject etc.). I have now changed my HDD to a SSD and want to download the files to a different hard drive. Is there an easy way to change all the destination folders at once? What I mean is, currently all the download destination folders begin with "C:\Newsbin\..." and I want to change that to "E:\Newsbin\...". The rest of the destination folder location shall stay the same.
I have seen that the download location seems to be stored in plain text in the downloads.db3-file, and I tried using a software tool called TextCrawler to find and replace all instances of "C:\Newsbin\" to "E:\Newsbin\" in that file, but I got an error message within TextCrawler, maybe because there are a few thousand entries,I don't know.
There doesn't seem to be an option within Newsbin for my problem, as all the changes in settings apply only to newly added downloads.
Anyone with an idea?
Thanks!
Last edited by Murphy on Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Batch-replace destination folders in existing download l

Postby Quade » Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:07 am

Yeah there's no easy way to change just the drive letter. You could easily reset all the paths but, all the files would have a single path after the change (which you don't want).

Someone with some programming skills could read the path out of the downloads.db3, then write it back out with a different drive letter.
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Re: Batch-replace destination folders in existing download l

Postby DThor » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:40 am

As a work around, what about selecting the contents and saving as an nzb? Then you could open it and re-add. Might want to try this in chunks if the list is obscenely huge...

You'd still need to deal with the subfolders, which if this was generated manually admittedly might make this a no fly scenario. If it was based on group or subject, though, you should be able to automatically generate.

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DT's workaround works!

Postby Murphy » Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:39 pm

Thanks guys for the quick replies. I followed DThor's idea of a workaround and it worked, since I didn't create the subfolders before manually.
It took a few tries, but Newsbin managed to save the whole download list (1.5TB in ~6000 post entries) as a 330MB nzb-file. Deleted the download list within Newsbin, loaded up the nzb, and added the posts in a handful of large selected number of posts to the download list. Thanks to the newly added change that each file can get a separate folder named by its subject,...etc. , even when selecting many posts, the whole thing was just a 5 minute effort. Apart from a few unnecessary folders, everything seems fine!

I think I remember a time when Newsbin wouldn't have been able to handle such a large amount of data. Nice progress in software development!
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