Want to see something cool?
A while back I shared how I use ExifTool to get extensive metadata for any file. I want to make that info dump pretty with Rich, a text formatting library for Python.
“But Brian,” I hear you cry. “ExifTool is Perl. Why would I want to use both Perl and Python?”
Because it’s fun, obviously.
You want a “real” reason? Okay fine. I haven’t found anything that can get the depth of file information I get from ExifTool. I haven’t found a formatting library that’s as pleasant to use as Rich — maybe TTY Toolkit?
Besides — ExifTool is a standalone command line tool. We don’t need to write any Perl to use it. Heck, we don’t even need to figure out the system calls.Sven Marnach is way ahead of us with the extremely helpful pyexiftool.
Rich and pyexiftool make Python an easy choice for this task.
Setting up
If you want to play along at home, make sure you have the dependencies.
$ brew install exiftool
$ pip install pyexiftool rich typer
Typer simplifies turning this random idea into a useful command line tool.
Some scaffolding
Even though I’m the only user, I still need to figure out how I plan to use it. At minimum? I hand my script a filename. It hands me metadata.
richexif FILENAME [OPTIONS]
I can hook some minimal Typer argument handling around that flow.
#!/usr/bin/env python
import logging
from rich.logging import RichHandler
import typer
logging.basicConfig(
level=logging.DEBUG,
format="%(message)s",
datefmt="[%X]",
handlers=[RichHandler()]
)
def main(filename: str):
"""Display nicely-formatted file metadata."""
logging.debug("filename: %s", filename)
Can I run it?
❯ chmod 755 richexif.py
❯ ./richexif.py hoku-hopes-for-snacksjpg.jpg
[14:33:30] DEBUG filename: hoku-hopes-for-snacks.jpg richexif.py:13
I can! What happens if I use it wrong?
❯ ./richexif.py
Usage: richexif.py [OPTIONS] FILENAME
Try 'richexif.py --help' for help.
Error: Missing argument 'FILENAME'.
I get an error message telling me what richexif.py needs to do its thing. Nice.
I confirmed that Typer handles the CLI bits, and Rich handles the formatting. Now for pyexiftool.
Oh and I’ll skip logging output from here on. Rich’s logging handler output is a joy to look at, but really that stuff is for me. For you it’ll just add noise.
Some metadata
I need exiftool, of course. Plus a Rich Console object, masterminding the display details for my terminal.
import exiftool
from rich.console import Console
console = Console()
exiftool’s get_metadata grabs everything ExifTool sees about a file. It also provides methods for ExifTool tags, but I won’t mess with them today. Tags — the official name for our metadata keys — are most useful when you already know what you’re looking for. We’re just checking stuff out.
For now, a little abstraction layer over pyexiftool’s ExifTool.
def get_metadata(filename):
"""Return a dictionary of file metadata."""
with exiftool.ExifTool() as et:
return et.get_metadata(filename)
main gets the metadata and asks console to print it.
def main(filename: str):
"""Display nicely-formatted file metadata."""
metadata = get_metadata(filename)
console.print(metadata)
And here’s what that looks like.
{
'SourceFile': 'hoku-hopes-for-snacks.jpg',
'ExifTool:ExifToolVersion': 12.15,
'File:FileName': 'hoku-hopes-for-snacks.jpg',
'File:Directory': '.',
'File:FileSize': 918330,
'File:FileModifyDate': '2021:02:06 00:54:29-08:00',
'File:FileAccessDate': '2021:02:06 11:30:33-08:00',
'File:FileInodeChangeDate': '2021:02:06 11:30:33-08:00',
'File:FilePermissions': 775,
'File:FileType': 'JPEG',
_…skipping 62 lines…_
'Composite:ScaleFactor35efl': 6.04651162790698,
'Composite:ShutterSpeed': 0.05,
'Composite:GPSLatitude': 47.5750857997222,
'Composite:GPSLongitude': -122.386441,
'Composite:CircleOfConfusion': '0.00496918925785101',
'Composite:FOV': 69.3903656740024,
'Composite:FocalLength35efl': 26,
'Composite:GPSPosition': '47.5750857997222 -122.386441',
'Composite:HyperfocalDistance': 2.48061927751922,
'Composite:LightValue': 3.81378119121704
}
Holy crap that’s a lot. Some of it could be considered sensitive information — unless you read my /now page. But it’s all there! Even in the snipped version you can learn a lot. Hello from my Windows partition in West Seattle during February of 2021!
But back to the other gripe about all this metadata. It’s way too much for me to take in all at once. I need some kind of filter!
Filtering the firehose
def filter_metadata(metadata, filter):
"""Return a copy of the metadata where fields contain the substring `filter`."""
return {k: v for k, v in metadata.items() if filter in k}
There’s no kind of transformation here. If a field constains the exact substring described in filter, use it.
Adding a Typer Option lets us ask for a filter from the command line.
def main(
filename: str,
filter: Optional[str] = typer.Option(
None, help="Substring to restrict displayed fields"
),
):
"""Display nicely-formatted file metadata."""
metadata = get_metadata(filename)
if filter:
metadata = filter_metadata(metadata, filter)
console.print(metadata)
If use --filter, we should only get matching tags. Leaving out the filter gets us everything.
Try it out!
$ ./richexif.py hoku-hopes-for-snacks.jpg --filter=Image
{
'File:ImageWidth': 3672,
'File:ImageHeight': 2066,
'EXIF:ImageWidth': 4032,
'EXIF:ImageHeight': 2268,
'EXIF:ExifImageWidth': 4032,
'EXIF:ExifImageHeight': 2268,
'EXIF:ImageUniqueID': 'J12LLKL00SM',
'EXIF:ThumbnailImage': '(Binary data 6788 bytes, use -b option to extract)',
'Composite:ImageSize': '3672 2066'
}
Now that I’m not overwhelmed by the quantity of output, I’m a little underwhelmed by the quality.
It’s nice. Don’t get me wrong. But all we’ve added to default exiftool behavior is some color.
I’ve played with Rich a bit. I know we can do better.
A metadata table!
Rich lets us create and display tables in the terminal.
from rich.table import Table
We need to build the table, defining columns and adding values row by row.
def file_table(filename, metadata):
"""Return a Rich Table showing the metadata for a file."""
table = Table("Field", "Value", title=filename)
for key, value in metadata.items():
table.add_row(key, str(value))
return table
def main(...):
"""Display nicely-formatted file metadata."""
...
if filter:
metadata = filter_metadata(metadata, filter)
table = file_table(filename, metadata)
console.print(table)
$ ./richexif.py hoku-hopes-for-snacksjpg.jpg --filter=Image
hoku-hopes-for-snacksjpg.jpg
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Field ┃ Value ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ File:ImageWidth │ 3672 │
│ File:ImageHeight │ 2066 │
│ EXIF:ImageWidth │ 4032 │
│ EXIF:ImageHeight │ 2268 │
│ EXIF:ExifImageWidth │ 4032 │
│ EXIF:ExifImageHeight │ 2268 │
│ EXIF:ImageUniqueID │ J12LLKL00SM │
│ EXIF:ThumbnailImage │ (Binary data 6788 bytes, use -b option to extract) │
│ Composite:ImageSize │ 3672 2066 │
└──────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Pretty nifty.
A metadata tree!
from rich.tree import Tree
def file_tree(filename, metadata):
tree = Tree(f"[bold]{filename}")
branches = {}
tagged_values = [(k.split(":"), v) for k, v in metadata.items()]
for tags, value in tagged_values:
root_tag = tags[0]
if root_tag not in branches:
branches[root_tag] = tree.add(f"[bold]{root_tag}")
if len(tags) == 2:
branches[root_tag].add(f"[italic]{tags[1]}:[/italic] {value}")
else:
branches[tags[0]].add(str(value))
return tree
Except now we have to ways to display metadata. Three, if you count the dictionary we started with. Well. Maybe later.
For now, a callback table that says what to call for each of the options.
from rich.tree import Tree
DISPLAYS = {
"table": lambda f, m: file_table(f, m),
"tree": lambda f, m: file_tree(f, m),
}
We don’t need to use lambdas here. Functions can be passed around same as any other value. But if I wrap them in a lambda I can build my constant table before Python knows the functions exist.
Typer uses callback functions to validate options. They do any processing or checks they need to, then return the supplied value if everything goes well.
def validate_display(value):
"""Return value if valid, or panic if it isn't."""
if value not in DISPLAYS:
raise typer.BadParameter(f"Format must be one of: {DISPLAYS.keys()}")
return value
Add the --display Option, making sure to point Typer at the callback.main itself knows the value is safe, or the script never would have reached it. So I can grab the displayer and call it without fear of consequence.
def main(
...
display: str = typer.Option(
"table",
help="How to display the metadata",
callback=validate_display,
),
):
"""Display nicely-formatted file metadata."""
...
displayer = FORMATS[display]
output = displayer(filename, metadata)
console.print(output)
Okay! What do we have now?
> ./richexif.py hoku-hopes-for-snacks.jpg --filter=Image --display=tree
hoku-hopes-for-snacks.jpg
├── File
│ ├── ImageWidth: 3672
│ └── ImageHeight: 2066
├── EXIF
│ ├── ImageWidth: 4032
│ ├── ImageHeight: 2268
│ ├── ExifImageWidth: 4032
│ ├── ExifImageHeight: 2268
│ ├── ImageUniqueID: J12LLKL00SM
│ └── ThumbnailImage: (Binary data 6788 bytes, use -b option to extract)
└── Composite
└── ImageSize: 3672 2066
Oooooh.
Anyways, that’s what I wanted to show you. Got plenty more ideas for mashing ExifTool and Rich together, as I’m sure you can imagine.
Top comments (0)