Backup and Recovery software for IDs and comments on your observations

I am glad to release under the terms of the MIT licence a Windows console application that is able to:

• backup all IDs and comments in all your observations, into in a single text file,
• log all IDs and comments removed online since the previous run of the software, in a text file.

The first time you run the software, it will create a backup of the IDs and comments present in all your observations.

The next time you run the sofware, it will update the backup by appending all new observations, as well as all new IDs and comments in all existing observations. In the backup, it will mark as "MissingSince..." all observations that you have deleted online and all IDs and comments deleted by their authors. No data is never removed from the backup.

The software creates also a log file, with a timestamp in the file name, containing all observations, IDs and comments that are in the backup but that have been removed online.

After each run, you are able to recover the lost IDs and comments from the log file. Open the log file and check what has been removed online. It is up to you to open your observations online and add IDs and/or comment for replacing the lost contents.

Ready to proceed? Let's start!

Double click on the "iNaturalist Backup.exe" file and the console application starts:

Go to this page (URL already in clipboard, just paste it in the brower address bar) and copy the text content displayed:

The software starts downloading the contents of your observations (not the photos or sound records, only text data).
The progress is displayed (1 page = 200 observations):

Oups! Something has been removed online:

Open the "jeanphilippeb - 2023-01-07.txt" file in the "Logs" folder to see in details what was removed:

The ID "143572419" in the header is the observation ID, from which 1 identification and 2 comments have been removed online.

Another "jeanphilippeb - 2023-01-07.html" file in the "Logs" folder in HTML format provides links to observations and shows the removed IDs and comments:

Click on the links to open the observations and to restore the lost content, if you think it is necessary.

Note that the backup also includes the comments attached to the identifications.

Publicado el 07 de enero de 2023 a las 01:05 PM por jeanphilippeb