Storing web gallery info back to catalog

[adtatanka]

I haven't found an answer to this, but am looking for a solution...

I'm using a modified version of the old LR HTML gallery.  When the Web module is selected in LR, I get an input panel where I can title the web gallery and add a copyright date.  Then, I output the gallery and it merges all the pictures and embedded text with the typed in stuff and I wind up with an HTML gallery that includes everything.  I have THOUSANDS of these, and it's pretty boilerplate.

The question:  How do I store these few string variables back into the catalog so that I don't have to type them back in every time I make other changes to a gallery?  My goal is to someday automate a regeneration of a huge library.  As it stands, every time I regenerate a gallery, I have to retype everything.  The galleries that come with LR seem to have the same problem (I'm using the latest LR Classic CC).

I've done software before, but really new to lua and LR's "back doors" so apologies in advance if I'm missing the boat or not explaining this well.  Thoughts?  Approaches?  Thanks.

[johnrellis]

Other kinds of plugins typically use LrPrefs for storing non-per-photo information.  (The preferences are global across all catalogs on a given computer.)  It's been years since I looked at Web galleries, but skimming it just now, it appears that galleries use a much different architecture and don't even have the global _PLUGIN variable defining the current plugin.

For your case, you might be able to store past gallery settings in a text file stored in the current catalog folder or in LrPathUtils.getStandardFilePath ("appData") (if you want the settings to apply to all catalogs).

[adtatanka]

Thanks John. I guess what I'm looking for might be considered "per set" or "per folder" custom metadata.  The LrPrefs approach doesn't seem very portable (computer to computer), so maybe an external text file would work better.

I guess an alternative solution might be to store the data for the web stuff in the metadata of every image in the set.  That seems inefficient, but maybe there are some advantages.

[adtatanka]

Wanted to get back to this, John.  I just discovered your example of how to use custom metadata from within a web gallery.  As it turns out, this mostly solves the problem just by storing a few fields and being able to use them in the gallery.  Lightroom automates the task of setting the same metadata in all pictures of a set, so this works out pretty well.  Thanks!

[johnrellis]

For reference by others in the future, I think you're referring to this thread (which I had forgotten about completely): Re: Accessing custom metadata from Web Engine gallery