exif2metadata-proofofconcept

This script is a proof of concept. The goal is to build a script to be able to build a metadata file by extracting EXIF data from a photograph. Also, includes a preparation script to build some collection metadata that can be reused for other files.

Goals

• script to create collection metadata
• script to extract EXIF data from a photograph
• integrate the collection data with the EXIF data to build a final metadata file.

Prerequisites

The install will check for a couple of additional tools in order to handle JSON objects and extract the EXIF data. If those are not already installed, the installer will load those as well. You may need to enter your password for those installations.

jq - a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor.

exiftool - a powerful tool used to extract metadata of a file.

Installing

You can install the application by running the following install command. This will basically create all the needed subfolders for you.

bash install.sh

Preparing to run

You will need to put your photograph into the ready subfolder.

Running the script(s)

prep.sh

If you will be creating a metadata file for a new collection, you'll need to run the prep.sh script first which will build the collection data that will be used in the main exif2metadata.sh script.

bash prep.sh

Follow/answer the on screen prompts and the file will be built. If you need, you can always rerun this script to build the file again. The collection file will be a JSON file and saved into the collections subfolder. The file will be your collection_name.json. For example, if I create a collection called "StevesPhotos" then the filename will be StevesPhotos.json.

exif2metadata.sh

The exif2metadata.sh script will extract the EXIF data from the photo and then use that with the collection data to build the final metadata file. The metadata file will be in the metadata subfolder once the script completes.

You will need pass in a few parameters when running this script.

1. the filename of the photograph
2. the name for the metadata file (without an extension... for example: StevesPhoto_001 )
3. the name of the collection (without an extension... for example: StevesPhotos )

The you can run the script like below:

bash exif2metadata.sh TravelingMan.jpg TravelingMan_001.jpg TravelingManCollection