How can I re-sync my iPhone and iPad after accidentally deleting my iTunes library (without losing all of the apps on my devices)?

Question

Long story short: A sequence of bad decisions on my part caused me to delete my entire iTunes library (song files, apps, itl file, everything in the music folder).  Another bad decision left me without a Time Machine backup of this folder. I have a backup of my music and I can redownload audiobooks from Audible, so I'm not stressed out about my audio.
The problem is my iPhone and iPad. I've downloaded >400 apps and have over 100 on each device. How can I begin syncing them to this new, app-free library without having every app deleted (along with their organization, settings and related-documents). I use these devices heavily so this is a huge conundrum for me.
The next step would seem to be to restore my audio files to a new iTunes library, but how do I then sync my devices to that library without wiping out every app on my iDevices?  I'm a pretty technical user and am willing to hand edit the ITL files if necessary.  I think that i _may_ be able to find a version of the itl file that's about a year old from an ancient backup. But that still doesn't solve the whole problem.
Thank you,
Spencer

Answer 1

I managed to lose an earlier reply I'd started before you came back with your "solved" so I didn't bother to retype it.
It went something like this:
You should be able to recover the media with the tips in  this post from forum regular Zevoneer but I'm not sure what the implications are for your application settings. You can probably transfer your purchases into an authorised library, backup the device, recover any other media using third party tools, then restore the device from the backup.
The older .itl file is useful however as iTunes should see this as the "home" library for your device which will allow you to preserve the application settings. (.itl file? Mac? I assume the library has migrated from PC to Mac at some point). Any files in the Previous iTunes Libraries folder or did you kill those as well? The most recent of these would be the best place to start.
And no, the .itl file is not editable by mortals...
Once you've restored the media from backups or recovered whatever else you useful can from the device, the scripts MusicFolder Files Not Added and Super Remove Dead Tracks should help get the library up to speed with the contents of the media folder.
tt2