Batch POI download utility available

I guess someone can write a program with Windows Installer for you in here. It will be more user friendly.

This POISync little program is great because it's a light weight tool & it doesn't have to install anything as long as you have Java on your computer.

I haven't tried POISYNC yet, but for the output, could I set it up something like this, to handle sub-folders, exactly like I load them into my GPS?

http://www.poi-factory.com/poifile/download/csv?node=11154 C:\MyPOIs\Food\McDonalds.csv

http://www.poi-factory.com/poifile/download/csv?node=6643 C:\MyPOIs\Rest Areas\Rest Areas.csv

Yes it will want to target each sub-directory or if not found will create them as it downloads.

Yes, you could. It will work the way you mentioned above.

Hi kmo,

Your file looks good, and I copied and pasted your control file and was able to download everything. Looks like there's something on the line for knights inn and the following lines that it doesn't like (not able to find a space or tab character), which doesn't make sense to me at this moment.

Would you be interested in trying out a debug version to see if we can get the problem narrowed down? Send me an email if you are and I'll rig up something.

I was initially hesitant to make this generally available because I am well aware of the degree of knowledge required to set it up and get it to work.

Unfortunately, I don't have the amount of time it would take to reduce the complexity at this point.

If you change your mind later and would like to try to set it up again, I'd be glad to help.

I've created a little video tutorial on how to use the utility. Just make sure you have the latest version of java and the utility.

http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stWU9RRUVIR19cQ15bWlxdVVZ...

Special thanks to Schumans!!!

WOW! What a timesaver!

Yes, it's great when your POI files are updating all the time like Walmart, SHell Gas Stations....

Thanks schumans.

Watch that Tutorial and give it a try. Hope it works for you.

Good Luck.

dgwood, that was a good tutorial, maybe you ahould get with turbo and make one for his program as well. It would be very helpful. great job.

I've discovered my poiFiles.txt has 60 plus downloads if installed as a group which could take some time to upload to GPS since I would have to look at each file as it is uploaded to GPS and decide if it requires proximity alert settings.

I'd like to share my idea for targeting folders to place each downloaded poi file. By doing this I can upload all files in express mode which do not requiring my supervision saving a great deal of time.

I typically would update my GPS monthly and redlight/speed cameras weekly.

I create sub-folder for c:\MyPOIs
1) c:\MyPOIs\Express, monthly updates used for files not requiring proximity settings
2) c:\MyPOIs\Manual, monthly updates used for files requiring proximity settings
3) c:\MyPOIs\Manual 6M, semi annual updates used for files requiring proximity settings
4) c:\MyPOIs\Manual RLSC, weekly updates used for red light and speed camera files

Loading to GPS
1) Upload Express folder, rename Garmin poi file name to Express
2) Upload Manual folder, rename Garmin poi file name to Manual
3) Upload Manual 6M folder, rename Garmin poi file name to Manual 6m
4) Upload Manual RSLC folder, uploading this last will allow you the choice of not renaming Garmin poi file name or rename to Manual RSLC. Your preference!

Hope my idea helps out

Hi phillyguy,

You may be able to take advantage of one of the enhancements in the next release. I'm putting the ability to specify other control file names other than the default poiFiles.txt. So you can a control file for each type of download.

Very cool! Thanks!

Would you mind if I include the URL to the tutorial in the docs for the next release?

Not at all! Just consider it payment for your awesome utility!

I'm looking forward to your next release. The auto extract with zip files will be very very useful with the red light camera pois.

Thanks for the info on the POI utility.

Sounds to good to be true.

Yes, I am looking for that feature too since I have to put the RLC file manually in my folder.

Had some troubles with this utility last night.

Gonna definately watch the video tutorial and also try the suggestion to rename the test file so i can determine whether I am the culprit for it not working correctly.

Hopefully I can figure it out because it sounds like and awesome utility!

The Sample POI files txt has different folders to download by category.

If you want to have less trouble, make a simple downloads like mine into One Folder. Here is a few lines from my POIfiles.txt

http://www.poi-factory.com/poifile/download/csv?node=3079 C:\MyPOIs\Advance Auto Parts.csv
http://www.poi-factory.com/poifile/download/csv?node=19015 C:\MyPOIs\AppleBees.csv
http://www.poi-factory.com/poifile/download/csv?node=24477 C:\MyPOIs\Auto Zone.csv

In my case, all my POI files are downloaded to C:\MyPOIs

I have no trouble with the PoiSync 1.0.4pre-20100113 release version. It downloaded 58 Files without errors. It seems like there are a lot of improvements in that version. I am sure he will finalize it & will be available soon. Thanks to SchumanShao!

Ooooh. I can't wait!

Contact me with your Email if you want to be a Beta Tester.

The more feedbacks the Author gets, the better software we can expect that fits our needs.
The pre-release I've mention above can download a zip file & can unzip in the folder you specify automatically.

Thanks go to schumans for his great work.

I am interested but cannot contact you through your user page...I'd give you my email here but am always a little hesitant to list my address in a forum. Could you possible contact me? Thanks!

... for the very useful tool and contribution! Keep up the great work!

I will upload it & post a link here then.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8TRSDLSY

This version can Unzip and also it can even rename the specific unzip file.

As I mentioned in the Subject "It's not Official Release (Beta-Testing Only)"It's for your testing purpose only to get more feedbacks to help the Author to write a better software for us.

Thanks.

e.g
I want 3 files in my C330. Those are the Redlight-Beta, Speed-Cameras and WalMart-Sam's Clubs.

But I do not want the Original file in there. I want to rename the Redlight-Beta.csv to Redlight-Cameras.csv after I unzip. Most of you know that you do not need 2 RLC files on your GPS that came from original Zip file.

Here is my POIfiles.txt

http://www.poi-factory.com/poifile/download/csv?node=25560 C:\C330POI\WalMart-Sam's Clubs.csv
http://www.poi-factory.com/images/csv/4nu-enforcement-camera... c:\temp\rlc
file:///C:/temp/rlc/Redlight-Beta.csv C:\C330POI\Redlight-Cameras.csv
http://www.poi-factory.com/images/csv/4nu-enforcement-camera... c:\temp\rlc
file:///C:/temp/rlc/Speed-Cameras.csv C:\C330POI\Speed-Cameras.csv

It's a sample file for 3 different scenarios for 3 different POI Files downloading methods. I guess the sky is the limit. You might have more ideas.

You can play around the way you want with the POIfiles.txt the way it fits your need as long as you follow the format & syntax.

Btw, I know nothing about programming I only use common sense. It works the way I want.

It's a great utility at the last because you can imagine downloading Over 50 POIs manually every week to keep your files up to date?? What a pain ... The solution is POIsync.

Well, Thanks schumans and all the feedbacks from users here.

I am pretty sure he will post a better version pretty soon for us.

Works great. Was able to get the red light cameras updated without any problems and without having to extract them and load them myself. I'll work on another tutorial to show people how to do it this weekend. Great work schumans and thanks for the tips kmo.

You only need to download the file once. You can run two file:/// commands right after one another for both the redlight cameras and speed cameras.

Here's what mine look like.

http://www.poi-factory.com/images/csv/4nu-enforcement-camera... C:\Windows\Temp\rlc
file:///C:\Windows\Temp\rlc\Redlight-beta.csv C:\Users\Dustin\Documents\Garmin stuff\POI's\POI Fact Files\Cameras\Redlight Cameras.csv
file:///C:\Windows\Temp\rlc\Speed-Cameras.csv C:\Users\Dustin\Documents\Garmin stuff\POI's\POI Fact Files\Cameras\Speed Cameras.csv

I will give a try on my poifiles.txt with your idea.

Thanks for the input.

Another good thing I've learned from you is unzipping the RLC file to C:\Windows\Temp\ is a great idea since I have Ccleaner

I find the 1.0.4 utility downloads the zip file to individual files just fine and don't care for dgwood12's use of a temp file. I've created a similar poifiles.txt, yes it works to allow utility to copy newly downloaded files to another location and even to different locations.

What I would like to see is a command line to direct the zip file contents to multiple folders of choice or create a command line to delete the temp file. These dos commands don't run on Windows XP anyone know how to delete directories with files.

rmdir c:\Temp /s
deltree c:\temp

This is my file
http://www.poi-factory.com/images/csv/4nu-enforcement-camera... C:\Temp\rlc
file:///C:\Temp\rlc\Redlight-Beta.csv C:\MyPOIs\Redlight Cameras Beta\Redlight Cameras Beta.csv
file:///C:\Temp\rlc\Speed-Cameras.csv C:\MyPOIs\Speed Cameras\Speed Cameras.csv

Agreed, so do I

I agree that the utility downloads the zip file just fine also but that leaves no reason to not put it into c:/windows/temp...the reason I put them in there is because 1) I rename the files coming out of the zip so I must copy them over to another directory using the file:/// command which leaves the original files sitting there and 2) 1 of the files in the zip isn't even used so I find no use for it. I agree with your request to delete the temp file also but for the time being I just clean my temp files periodically with ccleaner.

Thank you schumans. And thank you dgwood12. Without your tutorial at http://www.screentoaster.com/watch/stWU9RRUVIR19cQ15bWlxdVVZ... I never would have figured out how to make this thing work.

schumans, do you have a utility to confirm that the links in my poiFiles.txt file in fact are downloading the .csv file I desire? For example, if I messed up the node number such as by not copying the last digit in the string, a differnt POI database would be ported into my .csv file and I wouldn't know it. Can you create a utility to bring up the name of each web page for each link in my poiFiles.txt file. Thanks.

A bit confused about the wording in the help file. Im not any kind of programmer so I'm not sure what any of that means...I made the mylogin.txt but am not sure what to do with it. Anyone know how to do this? I want to be able to run a scheduled task to run poisync every other day and need this auto login to do it.

Great utility! I shall use it a lot. Is there any to mark the incoming file with the date it was posted on POI Factory? I know that %%date%% will add the date downloaded but I need a way know if the file I've downloaded is actually an update to the one I already have. I do some file manipulation before it is loaded into the GPS and would rather not have to do that work on files already the way I want them.

This is how I command mylogin.txt

"C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\poisync\poisync.bat"

Make a batch file that starts poisync.bat and tells it to use the login text file. Then direct your scheduler to run the new batch file.

Details:
Create a batch file named poisynclogin.bat by doing the following:
Open notepad
Type the line: poisync.bat
Click on file then click on save as
Select AllFiles(*.*) in the Save as Type choice box.
Type in the filename poisynclogin.bat
Choose the location where your poisync files are already stored.
Click on save.

Thanks

Sorry, the system messed up my post because of the imbedded code and I was trying to fix it when you read it.

Not everything came through and I will see if I can do a new post with everything in it.

I think the command deltree was removed by Microsoft a while ago. You should be able to do the same thing with the "rd" command. Try

rd /s

and if you don't want it to ask for delete confirmation, add /q.

Easiest way is to redirect the login file as input to poisync. To do this, instead of

poisync

do this instead

poisync <c:\mydir\mylogin.txt

and that should do it.

Unfortunately, the date the POI file has been update is not available to the utility. I believe it is in the database of POI Factory, but it is not set in the last modified header field for the downloads, so I'm not able to determine if a file has been modified.

I don't think there's a way that I can tell, but I'll run some tests to double check that. I may be able to tell what the original file name is in POI Factory, but that does not have to match the file you want to save it as.

update:

Looks like I can get the original file name for most. So I think I can change the successful download message to display the original name as well as the file name you specified, so you can see if it is indeed the one you intended to download.

Make a batch file that starts poisync.bat and tells it to use the login text file. Then direct your scheduler to run the new batch file.

Details:
Create a batch file named poisynclogin.bat by doing the following:

Open notepad

Type the line: poisync.bat <mylogin.txt

Click on file then click on save as

Select AllFiles(*.*) in the Save as Type choice box.

Type in the filename poisynclogin.bat

Choose the location where your poisync files are already stored.
Click on save.

Then direct your scheduler to run the poisynclogin.bat file.

Note: That way you don't have to wait for the scheduled event to test, you can perform the autologin update at any time by double clicking poisynclogin.bat

This will speed up downloads.

I have downloaded nearly 100 files in under 2 minutes, no lie.

Thanks. I guess I'll have to figure a work-around.