Class exiftool.ExifTool

Run the exiftool command-line tool and communicate with it.

Use common_args to enable/disable print conversion by specifying/omitting -n, respectively. This determines whether exiftool should perform print conversion, which prints values in a human-readable way but may be slower. If print conversion is enabled, appending # to a tag name disables the print conversion for this particular tag. See Exiftool print conversion FAQ for more details.

Some methods of this class are only available after calling run(), which will actually launch the exiftool subprocess. To avoid leaving the subprocess running, make sure to call terminate() method when finished using the instance. This method will also be implicitly called when the instance is garbage collected, but there are circumstance when this won’t ever happen, so you should not rely on the implicit process termination. Subprocesses won’t be automatically terminated if the parent process exits, so a leaked subprocess will stay around until manually killed.

A convenient way to make sure that the subprocess is terminated is to use the ExifTool instance as a context manager:

with ExifTool() as et:
        ...

Warning

Note that options and parameters are not checked. There is no error handling or validation of options passed to exiftool.

Nonsensical options are mostly silently ignored by exiftool, so there’s not much that can be done in that regard. You should avoid passing non-existent files to any of the methods, since this will lead to undefined behaviour.

param executable:

Specify file name of the exiftool executable if it is in your PATH. Otherwise, specify the full path to the exiftool executable.

Passed directly into executable property.

Note

The default value exiftool.constants.DEFAULT_EXECUTABLE will only work if the executable is in your PATH.

type executable:

str, or None to use default

param common_args:

Pass in additional parameters for the stay-open instance of exiftool.

Defaults to ["-G", "-n"] as this is the most common use case.

• -G (groupName level 1 enabled) separates the output with groupName:tag to disambiguate same-named tags under different groups.

• -n (print conversion disabled) improves the speed and consistency of output, and is more machine-parsable

Passed directly into common_args property.

Note

Depending on your use case, there may be other useful grouping levels and options. Search Phil Harvey’s exiftool documentation for groupNames and groupHeadings to get more info.

type common_args:

list of str, or None.

param bool win_shell:

(Windows only) Minimizes the exiftool process.

Note

This parameter may be deprecated in the future

param config_file:

File path to -config parameter when starting exiftool process.

Passed directly into config_file property.

type config_file:

str, Path, or None

param encoding:

Specify encoding to be used when communicating with exiftool process. By default, will use locale.getpreferredencoding()

Passed directly into encoding property.

param logger:

Set a custom logger to log status and debug messages to.

Passed directly into logger property.

exiftool.ExifTool.__init__(executable=None, common_args=['-G', '-n'], win_shell=False, config_file=None, encoding=None, logger=None)

Parameters:

• executable (str, or None to use default) –

  Specify file name of the exiftool executable if it is in your PATH. Otherwise, specify the full path to the exiftool executable.

  Passed directly into executable property.

  Note

  The default value exiftool.constants.DEFAULT_EXECUTABLE will only work if the executable is in your PATH.

• common_args (list of str, or None.) –

  Pass in additional parameters for the stay-open instance of exiftool.

  Defaults to ["-G", "-n"] as this is the most common use case.

  • -G (groupName level 1 enabled) separates the output with groupName:tag to disambiguate same-named tags under different groups.

  • -n (print conversion disabled) improves the speed and consistency of output, and is more machine-parsable

  Passed directly into common_args property.

  Note

  Depending on your use case, there may be other useful grouping levels and options. Search Phil Harvey’s exiftool documentation for groupNames and groupHeadings to get more info.

• win_shell (bool) –

  (Windows only) Minimizes the exiftool process.

  Note

  This parameter may be deprecated in the future

• config_file (str, Path, or None) –

  File path to -config parameter when starting exiftool process.

  Passed directly into config_file property.

• encoding (Optional[str]) –

  Specify encoding to be used when communicating with exiftool process. By default, will use locale.getpreferredencoding()

  Passed directly into encoding property.

• logger –

  Set a custom logger to log status and debug messages to.

  Passed directly into logger property.

Return type:

None

property exiftool.ExifTool.block_size

Block size for communicating with exiftool subprocess. Used when reading from the I/O pipe.

Getter:

Returns current block size

Setter:

Set a new block_size. Does basic error checking to make sure > 0.

Raises:

ValueError – If new block size is invalid

Type:

int

Return type:

int

property exiftool.ExifTool.common_args

Common Arguments executed with every command passed to exiftool subprocess

This is the parameter -common_args that is passed when the exiftool process is STARTED

Read Phil Harvey’s ExifTool documentation to get further information on what options are available / how to use them.

Getter:

Returns current common_args list

Setter:

If None is passed in, sets common_args to []. Otherwise, sets the given list without any validation.

Warning

No validation is done on the arguments list. It is passed verbatim to exiftool. Invalid options or combinations may result in undefined behavior.

Note

Setting is only available when exiftool process is not running.

Raises:

• ExifToolRunning – If attempting to set while running (running == True)

• TypeError – If setting is not a list

Type:

list[str], None

Return type:

Optional[List[str]]

property exiftool.ExifTool.config_file

Path to config file.

See ExifTool documentation for -config for more details.

Getter:

Returns current config file path, or None if not set

Setter:

File existence is checked when setting parameter

• Set to None to disable the -config parameter when starting exiftool

• Set to "" has special meaning and disables loading of the default config file. See ExifTool documentation for -config for more info.

Note

Currently file is checked for existence when setting. It is not checked when starting process.

Raises:

ExifToolRunning – If attempting to set while running (running == True)

Type:

str, Path, None

Return type:

Optional[Union[str, pathlib.Path]]

property exiftool.ExifTool.encoding

Encoding of Popen() communication with exiftool process.

Getter:

Returns current encoding setting

Setter:

Set a new encoding.

• If new_encoding is None, will detect it from locale.getpreferredencoding(do_setlocale=False) (do_setlocale is set to False as not to affect the caller).

• Default to utf-8 if nothing is returned by getpreferredencoding

Warning

Property setter does NOT validate the encoding for validity. It is passed verbatim into subprocess.Popen()

Note

Setting is only available when exiftool process is not running.

Raises:

ExifToolRunning – If attempting to set while running (running == True)

Return type:

Optional[str]

property exiftool.ExifTool.executable

Path to exiftool executable.

Getter:

Returns current exiftool path

Setter:

Specify just the executable name, or an absolute path to the executable. If path given is not absolute, searches environment PATH.

Note

Setting is only available when exiftool process is not running.

Raises:

ExifToolRunning – If attempting to set while running (running == True)

Type:

str, Path

Return type:

Union[str, pathlib.Path]

exiftool.ExifTool.execute(*params, raw_bytes=False)

Execute the given batch of parameters with exiftool.

This method accepts any number of parameters and sends them to the attached exiftool subprocess. The process must be running, otherwise exiftool.exceptions.ExifToolNotRunning is raised. The final -execute necessary to actually run the batch is appended automatically; see the documentation of run() for the common options. The exiftool output is read up to the end-of-output sentinel and returned as a str decoded based on the currently set encoding, excluding the sentinel.

The parameters must be of type str or bytes. str parameters are encoded to bytes automatically using the encoding property. For filenames, this should be the system’s filesystem encoding. bytes parameters are untouched and passed directly to exiftool.

Note

This is the core method to interface with the exiftool subprocess.

No processing is done on the input or output.

Parameters:

• params (one or more string/bytes parameters) –

  One or more parameters to send to the exiftool subprocess.

  Typically passed in via Unpacking Argument Lists

  Note

  The parameters to this function must be type str or bytes.

• raw_bytes (bool) – If True, returns bytes. Default behavior returns a str

Returns:

• STDOUT is returned by the method call, and is also set in last_stdout

• STDERR is set in last_stderr

• Exit Status of the command is set in last_status

Raises:

• ExifToolNotRunning – If attempting to execute when not running (running == False)

• ExifToolVersionError – If unexpected text was returned from the command while parsing out the sentinels

• UnicodeDecodeError – If the encoding is not specified properly, it may be possible for .decode() method to raise this error

• TypeError – If params argument is not str or bytes

Return type:

Union[str, bytes]

exiftool.ExifTool.execute_json(*params)

Execute the given batch of parameters and parse the JSON output.

This method is similar to execute(). It automatically adds the parameter -j to request JSON output from exiftool and parses the output.

The return value is a list of dictionaries, mapping tag names to the corresponding values. All keys are strings. The values can have multiple types. Each dictionary contains the name of the file it corresponds to in the key "SourceFile".

Note

By default, the tag names include the group name in the format <group>:<tag> (if using the -G option).

You can adjust the output structure with various exiftool options.

Warning

This method does not verify the exit status code returned by exiftool. That is left up to the caller.

This will mimic exiftool’s default method of operation “continue on error” and “best attempt” to complete commands given.

If you want automated error checking, use exiftool.ExifToolHelper

Parameters:

params (one or more string/bytes parameters) –

One or more parameters to send to the exiftool subprocess.

Typically passed in via Unpacking Argument Lists

Note

The parameters to this function must be type str or bytes.

Returns:

Valid JSON parsed into a Python list of dicts

Raises:

• ExifToolOutputEmptyError –

  If exiftool did not return any STDOUT

  Note

  This is not necessarily an exiftool error, but rather a programmer error.

  For example, setting tags can cause this behavior.

  If you are executing a command and expect no output, use execute() instead.

• ExifToolJSONInvalidError –

  If exiftool returned STDOUT which is invalid JSON.

  Note

  This is not necessarily an exiftool error, but rather a programmer error.

  For example, -w can cause this behavior.

  If you are executing a command and expect non-JSON output, use execute() instead.

Return type:

List

property exiftool.ExifTool.last_status

Exit Status Code for most recent result from execute()

Note

This property can be read at any time, and is not dependent on running state of ExifTool.

It is INTENTIONALLY NOT CLEARED on exiftool termination, to allow for executing a command and terminating, but still having the result available.

Return type:

Optional[int]

property exiftool.ExifTool.last_stderr

STDERR for most recent result from execute()

Note

The return type can be either str or bytes.

If the most recent call to execute() raw_bytes=True, then this will return bytes. Otherwise this will be str.

Note

This property can be read at any time, and is not dependent on running state of ExifTool.

It is INTENTIONALLY NOT CLEARED on exiftool termination, to allow for executing a command and terminating, but still having the result available.

Return type:

Optional[Union[str, bytes]]

property exiftool.ExifTool.last_stdout

STDOUT for most recent result from execute()

Note

The return type can be either str or bytes.

If the most recent call to execute() raw_bytes=True, then this will return bytes. Otherwise this will be str.

Note

This property can be read at any time, and is not dependent on running state of ExifTool.

It is INTENTIONALLY NOT CLEARED on exiftool termination, to allow for executing a command and terminating, but still having the result available.

Return type:

Optional[Union[str, bytes]]

exiftool.ExifTool.logger

Write-only property to set the class of logging.Logger

If this is set, then status messages will log out to the given class.

Note

This can be set and unset (set to None) at any time, regardless of whether the subprocess is running (running == True) or not.

Setter:

Specify an object to log to. The class is not checked, but validation is done to ensure the object has callable methods info, warning, error, critical, exception.

Raises:

• AttributeError – If object does not contain one or more of the required methods.

• TypeError – If object contains those attributes, but one or more are non-callable methods.

Type:

Object

exiftool.ExifTool.run()

Start an exiftool subprocess in batch mode.

This method will issue a UserWarning if the subprocess is already running (running == True). The process is started with common_args as common arguments, which are automatically included in every command you run with execute().

You can override these default arguments with the common_args parameter in the constructor or setting common_args before caaling run().

Note

If you have another executable named exiftool which isn’t Phil Harvey’s ExifTool, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot as there’s no error checking for that

Raises:

• FileNotFoundError – If exiftool is no longer found. Re-raised from subprocess.Popen()

• OSError – Re-raised from subprocess.Popen()

• ValueError – Re-raised from subprocess.Popen()

• subproccess.CalledProcessError – Re-raised from subprocess.Popen()

• RuntimeError – Popen() launched process but it died right away

• ExifToolVersionError – exiftool.constants.EXIFTOOL_MINIMUM_VERSION not met. ExifTool process will be automatically terminated.

Return type:

None

property exiftool.ExifTool.running

Read-only property which indicates whether the exiftool subprocess is running or not.

Getter:

Returns current running state

Note

This checks to make sure the process is still alive.

If the process has died since last running detection, this property will detect the state change and reset the status accordingly.

Return type:

bool

exiftool.ExifTool.set_json_loads(json_loads, **kwargs)

Advanced: Override default built-in json.loads() method. The method is only used once in execute_json()

This allows using a different json string parser.

(Alternate json libraries typically provide faster speed than the built-in implementation, more supported features, and/or different behavior.)

Examples of json libraries: orjson, rapidjson, ujson, …

Note

This method is designed to be called the same way you would expect to call the provided json_loads method.

Include any kwargs you would in the call.

For example, to pass additional arguments to json.loads(): set_json_loads(json.loads, parse_float=str)

Note

This can be set at any time, regardless of whether the subprocess is running (running == True) or not.

Warning

This setter does not check whether the method provided actually parses json. Undefined behavior or crashes may occur if used incorrectly

This is advanced configuration for specific use cases only.

For an example use case, see the FAQ

Parameters:

• json_loads (callable) – A callable method to replace built-in json.loads used in execute_json()

• kwargs – Parameters passed to the json_loads method call

Raises:

TypeError – If json_loads is not callable

Return type:

None

exiftool.ExifTool.terminate(timeout=30, _del=False)

Terminate the exiftool subprocess.

If the subprocess isn’t running, this method will throw a warning, and do nothing.

Note

There is a bug in CPython 3.8+ on Windows where terminate() does not work during __del__()

See CPython issue starting a thread in __del__ hangs at interpreter shutdown for more info.

Parameters:

• timeout (int) –

• _del (bool) –

Return type:

None

property exiftool.ExifTool.version

Read-only property which is the string returned by exiftool -ver

The -ver command is ran once at process startup and cached.

Getter:

Returns cached output of exiftool -ver

Raises:

ExifToolNotRunning – If attempting to read while not running (running == False)

Return type:

str