# A success story

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-success-story/79577>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 10, 2006, 6:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-success-story/79577 "2006-03-10T18:46:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/c77e96/32.png) [@pie-r-squared](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pie-r-squared)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 6:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/a-success-story/79577/1 "2006-03-10T18:46:52Z")

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No, this isn’t some story about a successful enterprise-level  
intranet/extranet web portal solution done entirely in Ruby (and Rails).  
This is just a story of quick success in doing a simple task.

Problem: I wanted to create images of a web-suitable size from the  
images  
in one of my wife’s iPhoto albums without taking over my wife’s  
computer (e.g. VNC over ssh to take control) since she was using  
it at the time.

Solution:

% sudo gem install -r -y iphoto2

Ruby script (listalbum):

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require ‘rubygems’  
require ‘iphoto2’

if ARGV.length == 1  
data = IPhoto2.new(ARGV[0])  
data.albums.each { |a| puts a.name }  
elsif ARGV.length == 2  
data = IPhoto2.new(ARGV[0])  
album = data.albums.select { |a| a.name == ARGV[1] }  
fail “Could not find an album named ‘#{ARGV[1]}’” unless album.length  
== 1  
album = album[0]  
album.images.each { |img| puts img.path }  
else  
fail “Usage: #{ **FILE** } \<AlbumData.xml\> [album name]”  
end

% mkdir /tmp/pics  
% listalbum AlbumData.xml ‘Our Cats’ | tr ‘\012’ ‘\000’ | xargs -0 -Jx  
cp x /tmp/pics  
% mogrify -resize ‘1024\>’ /tmp/pics/\*

###############

So yeah, I’m pleased. Mainly I’m pleased that the iphoto2 gem exists and  
Just Works, but I’m pleased with how easily I did all this. I neglected  
to  
mention that this mostly (the listalbum and the mogrify) happened on a  
Linux box, and the Mac just supplied the AlbumData.xml and JPG files.

–Greg