File names Zotero generates too long

A John W Harrison
There have been other discussions about this but there appears to be no conclusion or solution. The last one posted by flefevre and responded to by Dan Stillman has for some reasons been closed even though it was less than an hour ago.

The problem is that Zotero produces files names that are just way to long for back up onto NAS systems based on FreeNAS, for file sync programs or for back up or sync to the cloud. This is especially so if the Zotero directory is not in the root of the drive.

An example on my system is
d:\Group\Group Admin\Zotero\storage\P4FDR5MP\zhb+klh+ih5baaaaaaalaaaaaanaa0aaavk4bgmzbkcg2ww1lbekxkvaftffqqawksyhilgb3hqtjqhebbodeiaxmijyhhigwwvigeoagqgzaswiaiia3mx+ctwowfhad9dtieaow==@22

The above length is ridiculous and unnecessary. Please fix the issue because I like Zotero and would prefer to be able to use it, not something else

John Harrison
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  • dstillman
    The last one posted by flefevre and responded to by Dan Stillman has for some reasons been closed even though it was less than an hour ago.
    Huh? This one, from January 2010?
    An example on my system is
    d:\Group\Group Admin\Zotero\storage\P4FDR5MP\zhb+klh+ih5baaaaaaalaaaaaanaa0aaavk4bgmzbkcg2ww1lbekxkvaftffqqawksyhilgb3hqtjqhebbodeiaxmijyhhigwwvigeoagqgzaswiaiia3mx+ctwowfhad9dtieaow==@22
    Filenames like this are created by the third-party snapshot code Zotero uses, and they result from advertising scripts served by sites. There's an open issue to skip these files. Patches welcome.
  • A John W Harrison
    Dan - you seem to know about this and work more closely with the Zotero people. Can I just delete the files that are too long until somebody patches the program so they do not appear. they cause havoc with my backup strategy
  • adamsmith
    Dan writes the code, so yes he'd know :-). But in this case, so do I: Yes, you can just delete the files, without any negative consequences.
  • A John W Harrison
    Much appreciated Adam. How far can this file deletion go. I have directories
    Zotero\storage\???????? where the question marks are alpha numeric e.g. P4FDR5MP and in them are the files that are very long Can I delete the whole directory as the files appear old. Please explain or point to me where it is explained what is important or not.
  • adamsmith
    The "storage" folder holds all files and snapshot attached to Zotero items, so presumably you wouldn't want to delete that.

    The P4FDR5MP (and similar) folder stores the snapshot of a website (or a pdf file etc.). While you _can_ delete that whole folder, that would delete the snapshot, so that's not recommended: if you're OK deleting the snapshot, check which Zotero item that folder belongs to and delete the snapshot from within Zotero for a cleaner solution - after emptying the Zotero trash that will also delete that folder and you won't have a dead link in Zotero.
  • mgrowhoski
    May I ask if there has been any progress with this issue? I have encountered long path errors a few times when copying my directory between Mac and PC, but just now it cropped up when I made a simple duplicate of my Main Library in the same Zotero folder (on a PC). The resulting path is longer only by the addition of the date (ie, 20131218). I'm glad to know it's nothing major, but there is still a nagging worry in the back of my mind that I might delete something important. I realize it's a limitation in Windows, not Zotero--Microsoft can't even get SkyDrive working properly with long paths. I'm not syncing Zotero with SkyDrive, btw--I just want a quick, local backup. Thank you!
  • mgrowhoski
    PS: I want to add that in my case, the files don't seem to be advertisements (I use AdBlock). It still looks like junk, but it came from Wikipedia. I see a URL at the top of each, pointing to

    http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd

    Some kind of error page for deleted content?
  • dstillman
    What's an example URL? This actually should be improved by now. (The linked ticket was closed.)
    just now it cropped up when I made a simple duplicate of my Main Library in the same Zotero folder (on a PC)
    What do you mean by this, exactly? Note that on Windows the total path length is one restriction, so if you copied the Zotero data directory files into a folder with a slightly longer name, you could potentially run into trouble. There's not really anything Zotero can do about that, other than significantly overshortening filenames.
  • aurimas
    But also, to make backups on Windows it makes sense to simply zip up the folder, which also avoids the long file path issue (at least in this case)
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