osxmetadata 0.96.5

Read and write meta data, such as tags/keywords, on Mac OS X files

osxmetadata Homepage

What is osxmetadata?

osxmetadata provides a simple interface to access various metadata about Mac OS X files. Currently supported metadata includes tags/keywords, Finder comments, and download data (downloaded where from and downloaded data). This module was inspired by osx-tags by "Ben S / scooby" and extended for my needs. It is published under the same MIT license.

Supported operating systems

Only works on Mac OS X.

Installation instructions

osxmetadata uses setuptools, thus simply run:

python setup.py install

Command Line Usage

Installs command line tool called osxmetadata. This is not full replacement for mdls and xattr commands but provides a simple interface to view/edit metadata supported by osxmetadata

Currently, only supports reading/writing tags and Finder comments and export to text or JSON. Can import metadata from a JSON file to restore tags & Finder comments. I plan to add additional metadata in the future. My use case for import/export to JSON is to backup metadata for use with cloud services such as backblaze that do not preserve metadata stored in extended attributes. By exporting all metadata to a JSON file which backblaze etc. will backup, you can restore metadata if you ever need to restore files from backup.

If you only care about the command line tool, I recommend installing with pipx

usage: osxmetadata [-h] [-v] [-j] [-q] [--force] [-o OUTFILE] [-r RESTORE]
                   [--addtag ADDTAG] [--cleartags] [--rmtag RMTAG]
                   [--setfc SETFC] [--clearfc] [--addfc ADDFC]
                   [files [files ...]]

Import and export metadata from files

positional arguments:
  files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            Show this help message
  -v, --verbose         Print verbose output during processing
  -j, --json            Output to JSON, optionally provide output file name:
                        --outfile=file.json NOTE: if processing multiple files
                        each JSON object is written to a new line as a
                        separate object (ie. not a list of objects)
  -q, --quiet           Be extra quiet when running.
  --force               Force new metadata to be written even if unchanged
  -o OUTFILE, --outfile OUTFILE
                        Name of output file. If not specified, output goes to
                        STDOUT
  -r RESTORE, --restore RESTORE
                        Restore all metadata by reading from JSON file RESTORE
                        (previously created with --json --outfile=RESTORE).
                        Will overwrite all existing metadata with the metadata
                        specified in the restore file. NOTE: JSON file
                        expected to have one object per line as written by
                        --json
  --addtag ADDTAG       add tag/keyword for file. To add multiple tags, use
                        multiple --addtag otions. e.g. --addtag foo --addtag
                        bar
  --cleartags           remove all tags from file
  --rmtag RMTAG         remove tag from file
  --setfc SETFC         set Finder comment
  --clearfc             clear Finder comment
  --addfc ADDFC         append a Finder comment, preserving existing comment

Example uses of the module

from osxmetadata import *

fname = 'foo.txt'

meta = OSXMetaData(fname)
print(meta.name)
print(meta.finder_comment)
print(meta.tags)
print(meta.where_from)
print(str(meta.download_date))

Tags

Accessed via OSXMetaData.tags

Behaves mostly like a set with following methods:

• update (sets multiple tags)
• add (add a single tag)
• += (add a single tag)
• remove (raises error if tag not present)
• discard (does not raise error if tag not present)
• clear (removes all tags)

To replace all tags with a new set of tags, use clear() then update()

Duplicate tags will be ignored.

The standard OS X Finder color labels are handled via tags. For example, setting a tag name of Gray, Green, Purple, Blue, Yellow, Red, or Orange will also set the equivalent Finder color label. This is consistent with how the Finder works. If a file has a color label, it will be returned as a tag of the corresponding color name when reading from OSXMetaData.tags

>>> from osxmetadata import OSXMetaData
>>> md = OSXMetaData('foo.txt')
>>> md.tags.update('Foo','Gray','Red','Test')
>>> print(md.tags)
Foo, Gray, Red, Test
#Standard Mac Finder color labels are normalized
>>> md.tags.add('PURPLE')
>>> print(md.tags)
Foo, Purple, Red, Test, Gray
>>> md.tags.add('FOOBAR')
>>> print(md.tags)
Foo, Purple, Red, Test, Gray, FOOBAR
>>> md.tags += 'MyCustomTag'
>>> print(md.tags)
Foo, Purple, Red, Test, Gray, MyCustomTag, FOOBAR
>>> md.tags.remove('Purple')
>>> print(md.tags)
Foo, Red, Test, Gray, MyCustomTag, FOOBAR
>>> md.tags.remove('Purple')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "osxmetadata/osxmetadata.py", line 148, in remove
    tags.remove(self.__tag_normalize(tag))
KeyError: 'Purple\n3'
>>> md.tags.discard('Purple')
>>> md.tags.discard('Red')
>>> print(md.tags)
Foo, Test, Gray, MyCustomTag, FOOBAR
>>> len(md.tags)
5
>>> md.tags.clear()
>>> print(md.tags)

>>> len(md.tags)
0
>>>

Finder Comments

Accessed via OXMetaData.finder_comment

Behaves mostly like a string. You can assign a string or use +=. To clear, assign None or ''

>>> md.finder_comment = 'My Comment'
>>> print(md.finder_comment)
My Comment
>>> md.finder_comment += ', and FooBar!'
>>> print(md.finder_comment)
My Comment, and FooBar!
>>> md.finder_comment = None
>>> print(md.finder_comment)

>>>

Download Data

Accessed via OSXMetaData.download_date (datetime.datetime object) and OSXMetaData.where_from (list of URLs as strings)

>>> import datetime
>>> md.download_date = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> print(str(md.download_date))
2018-12-15 15:45:10.869535
>>> md.where_from = ['http://wwww.mywebsite.com','https://downloads.mywebsite.com/downloads/foo']
>>> print(md.where_from)
['http://wwww.mywebsite.com', 'https://downloads.mywebsite.com/downloads/foo']
>>> md.where_from=[]
>>> print(md.where_from)
[]
>>>

Usage Notes

Changes are immediately written to the file. For example, OSXMetaData.tags.add('Foo') immediately writes the tag 'Foo' to the file.

Metadata is refreshed from disk every time a class property is accessed.

This will only work on file systems that support Mac OS X extended attributes.

Dependencies

PyObjC

xattr

Acknowledgements

This module was inspired by osx-tags by "Ben S / scooby". I leveraged osx-tags to bootstrap the design of this module. I wanted a more general OS X metadata library so I rolled my own.

To set the Finder comments, I use py-applescript by "Raymond Yee / rdhyee". Rather than import this module, I included the entire module (which is published as public domain code) in a private module to prevent ambiguity with other applescript modules on PyPi. py-applescript uses a native bridge via PyObjC and is very fast compared to the other osascript based modules.