osxmetadata 0.98.3

Read and write meta data, such as tags/keywords, Finder comments, etc. on MacOS files

osxmetadata

What is osxmetadata?

osxmetadata provides a simple interface to access various metadata about MacOS / OS X files. Currently supported metadata attributes include tags/keywords, Finder comments, authors, etc.

Motivation

Apple provides rich support for file metadata through various metadata extended attributes. MacOS provides tools to view and set these various metadata attributes. For example, mdls lists metadata associated with a file but doesn't let you edit the data while xattr allows the user to set extended attributes but requires the values be in the form of a MacOS plist which is impractical. osxmetadata makes it easy to to both view and manipulate the MacOS metadata attributes, either programmatically or through a command line tool.

Supported operating systems

Only works on MacOS. Requires Python 3.6+.

Installation instructions

osxmetadata uses setuptools, thus simply run:

python setup.py install

Command Line Usage

Installs command line tool called osxmetadata which provides a simple interface to view/edit metadata supported by osxmetadata.

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

The command line tool can also be run via python -m osxmetadata. Running it with no arguments or with --help option will print a help message:

Usage: osxmetadata [OPTIONS] FILE

  Read/write metadata from file(s).

Options:
  -v, --version             Show the version and exit.
  -w, --walk                Walk directory tree, processing each file in the
                            tree
  --set ATTRIBUTE VALUE     Set ATTRIBUTE to VALUE
  --list                    List all metadata attributes for FILE
  --clear ATTRIBUTE         Remove attribute from FILE
  --append ATTRIBUTE VALUE  Append VALUE to ATTRIBUTE
  --get ATTRIBUTE           Get value of ATTRIBUTE
  --remove ATTRIBUTE VALUE  Remove VALUE from ATTRIBUTE; only applies to
                            multi-valued attributes
  --update ATTRIBUTE VALUE  Update ATTRIBUTE with VALUE; for multi-valued
                            attributes, this adds VALUE to the attribute if
                            not already in the list
  --help                    Show this message and exit.

Valid attributes for ATTRIBUTE: Each attribute has a short name, a constant
name, and a long constant name. Any of these may be used for ATTRIBUTE

For example: --set findercomment "Hello world"
or:          --set kMDFinderComment "Hello world"
or:          --set com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment "Hello world"

Attributes that are strings can only take one value for --set; --append will
append to the existing value.  Attributes that are arrays can be set multiple
times to add to the array: e.g. --set keywords 'foo' --set keywords 'bar' will
set keywords to ['foo', 'bar']

Short Name      Description
authors         kMDItemAuthors, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemAuthors; The
                author, or authors, of the contents of the file. An array of
                strings.
comment         kMDItemComment, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemComment; A comment
                related to the file. This differs from the Finder comment,
                kMDItemFinderComment. A string.
copyright       kMDItemCopyright, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemCopyright; The
                copyright owner of the file contents. A string.
creator         kMDItemCreator, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemCreator;
                Application used to create the document content (for example
                “Word”, “Pages”, and so on). A string.
description     kMDItemDescription, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDescription; A
                description of the content of the resource. The description
                may include an abstract, table of contents, reference to a
                graphical representation of content or a free-text account
                of the content. A string.
downloadeddate  kMDItemDownloadedDate,
                com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDownloadedDate; The date the item
                was downloaded.  A date in ISO 8601 format: e.g.
                2000-01-12T12:00:00 or 2000-12-31 (ISO 8601 w/o time zone)
findercomment   kMDItemFinderComment,
                com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment; Finder comments for
                this file. A string.
headline        kMDItemHeadline, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemHeadline; A
                publishable entry providing a synopsis of the contents of
                the file. A string.
keywords        kMDItemKeywords, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemKeywords;
                Keywords associated with this file. For example, “Birthday”,
                “Important”, etc. This differs from Finder tags
                (_kMDItemUserTags) which are keywords/tags shown in the
                Finder and searchable in Spotlight using "tag:tag_name"An
                array of strings.
tags            _kMDItemUserTags, com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags;
                Finder tags; searchable in Spotlight using "tag:tag_name".
                If you want tags/keywords visible in the Finder, use this
                instead of kMDItemKeywords.
wherefroms      kMDItemWhereFroms, com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms;
                Describes where the file was obtained from (e.g. URL
                downloaded from). An array of strings.

Supported Attributes

Information about commonly used MacOS metadata attributes is available from Apple.

osxmetadata currently supports the following metadata attributes:

Constant	Short Name	Long Constant	Description
kMDItemAuthors	authors	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemAuthors	The author, or authors, of the contents of the file. A list of strings.
kMDItemComment	comment	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemComment	A comment related to the file. This differs from the Finder comment, kMDItemFinderComment. A string.
kMDItemCopyright	copyright	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemCopyright	The copyright owner of the file contents. A string.
kMDItemCreator	creator	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemCreator	Application used to create the document content (for example “Word”, “Pages”, and so on). A string.
kMDItemDescription	description	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDescription	A description of the content of the resource. The description may include an abstract, table of contents, reference to a graphical representation of content or a free-text account of the content. A string.
kMDItemDownloadedDate	downloadeddate	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemDownloadedDate	The date the item was downloaded. A date in ISO 8601 format: e.g. 2000-01-12T12:00:00 or 2000-12-31 (ISO 8601 w/o time zone)
kMDItemFinderComment	findercomment	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment	Finder comments for this file. A string.
kMDItemHeadline	headline	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemHeadline	A publishable entry providing a synopsis of the contents of the file. A string.
kMDItemKeywords	keywords	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemKeywords	Keywords associated with this file. For example, “Birthday”, “Important”, etc. This differs from Finder tags (_kMDItemUserTags) which are keywords/tags shown in the Finder and searchable in Spotlight using "tag:tag_name"A list of strings.
_kMDItemUserTags	tags	com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags	Finder tags; searchable in Spotlight using "tag:tag_name". If you want tags/keywords visible in the Finder, use this instead of kMDItemKeywords. A list of strings.
kMDItemWhereFroms	wherefroms	com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms	Describes where the file was obtained from (e.g. URL downloaded from). A list of strings.

Example uses of the package

Using the command line tool to set metadata:

Set Finder tags to Test, append "John Doe" to list of authors, clear (delete) description, set finder comment to "Hello World":

osxmetadata --set tags Test --append authors "John Doe" --clear description --set findercomment "Hello World" ~/Downloads/test.jpg

Walk a directory tree and add the Finder tag "test" to every file:

osxmetadata --append tags "Test" --walk ~/Downloads

Using the programmatic interface

There are two ways to access metadata using the programmatic interface. First, an OSXMetaData object will create properties for each supported attribute using the "Short name" in table above. For example:

from osxmetadata import OSXMetaData

filename = 'foo.txt'
meta = OSXMetaData(filename)

# set description
meta.description = "This is my document."

# add "Foo" to tags
meta.tags += ["Foo"]

# set authors to "John Doe" and "Jane Smith"
meta.authors = ["John Doe","Jane Smith"]

# clear copyright
meta.copyright = None

If attribute is a list, most list methods can be used. For example:

>>> import osxmetadata
>>> md = osxmetadata.OSXMetaData("/Users/rhet/Downloads/test.jpg")
>>> md.tags
['Blue', 'Green', 'Foo']
>>> md.tags.reverse()
>>> md.tags
['Foo', 'Green', 'Blue']
>>> md.tags.pop(1)
'Green'
>>> md.tags
['Foo', 'Blue']
>>> md.tags.sort()
>>> md.tags
['Blue', 'Foo']
>>> md.tags.append("Test")
>>> md.tags
['Blue', 'Foo', 'Test']
>>> md.tags.extend(["Tag1","Tag2"])
>>> md.tags
['Blue', 'Foo', 'Test', 'Tag1', 'Tag2']
>>> md.tags += ["Tag3"]
>>> md.tags
['Blue', 'Foo', 'Test', 'Tag1', 'Tag2', 'Tag3']
>>> md.tags.remove('Blue')
>>> md.tags
['Foo', 'Test', 'Tag1', 'Tag2', 'Tag3']
>>> # removing value that doesn't exist raises ValueError
>>> md.tags.remove('Blue')
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list
>>> md.tags
['Foo', 'Test', 'Tag1', 'Tag2', 'Tag3']
>>> md.tags.count('Test')
1
>>> md.tags.index('Tag1')
2

If attribute is a date/time stamp (e.g. kMDItemDownloadedDate), value should be a datetime.datetime object (or a list of datetime.datetime objects depending on the attribute type):

>>> import osxmetadata
>>> import datetime
>>> md = osxmetadata.OSXMetaData("/Users/rhet/Downloads/test.jpg")
>>> md.downloadeddate
[datetime.datetime(2012, 2, 13, 0, 0)]
>>> md.downloadeddate = [datetime.datetime.now()]
>>> md.downloadeddate
[datetime.datetime(2020, 2, 29, 8, 36, 10, 332350)]

If attribute is string, it can be treated as a standard python str:

>>> import osxmetadata
>>> md = osxmetadata.OSXMetaData("/Users/rhet/Downloads/test.jpg")
>>> md.findercomment = "Hello world"
>>> md.findercomment
'Hello world'
>>> md.findercomment += ". Goodbye"
>>> md.findercomment
'Hello world. Goodbye'
>>> "world" in md.findercomment
True

The second way to access metadata is using methods from OSXMetaData to get/set/update etc. the various attributes. The various methods take the name of the attribute to be operated on which can be specified using either the short name, constant, or long constant from the table above. osxmetadata also exports constants with the same name as specified in the Apple documentation and the table above, for example, kMDItemDescription.

from osxmetadata import *

fname = 'foo.txt'
meta = OSXMetaData(fname)

description = meta.get_attribute(kMDItemDescription)

meta.set_attribute(kMDItemCreator,"OSXMetaData")

meta.append_attribute("tags",["Blue"])

meta.update_attribute("com.apple.metadata:kMDItemKeywords",["Foo"])

meta.append_attribute("findercomment","Goodbye")

meta.clear_attribute("tags")

The following methods are available:

get_attribute(attribute_name)

Load attribute and return value or None if attribute was not set

• attribute_name: an osxmetadata Attribute name

get_attribute_str(attribute_name)

Returns a string representation of attribute value. e.g. if attribute is a datedate.datetime object, will format using datetime.isoformat()

• attribute_name: an osxmetadata Attribute name

set_attribute(attribute_name, value)

Write attribute to file with value

• attribute_name: an osxmetadata Attribute name
• value: value to store in attribute

update_attribute(attribute_name, value)

Update attribute with union of itself and value. This avoids adding duplicate values to attribute.

• attribute: an osxmetadata Attribute name
• value: value to append to attribute

Note: implementation simply calls append_attribute with update=True; provided for convenience.

append_attribute(attribute_name, value, update=False)

Append value to attribute.

• attribute_name: an osxmetadata Attribute name
• value: value to append to attribute
• update: (bool) if True, update instead of append (e.g. avoid adding duplicates, default is False)

remove_attribute(attribute_name, value)

Remove a value from attribute, raise ValueError if attribute does not contain value. Only applies to multi-valued attributes, otherwise raises TypeError.

• attribute_name: name of OSXMetaData attribute

discard_attribute(attribute_name, value)

Remove a value from attribute, unlike remove, does not raise exception if attribute does not contain value. Only applies to multi-valued attributes, otherwise raises TypeError.

• attribute_name: name of OSXMetaData attribute

clear_attribute(attribute_name)

Clear anttribute (remove it from the file).

• attribute_name: name of OSXMetaData attribute

list_metadata()

List the Apple metadata attributes set on the file. e.g. those in com.apple.metadata namespace.

Usage Notes

Changes are immediately written to the file. For example, OSXMetaData.tags.append("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

Click

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. This module is published under the same MIT license as osx-tags.

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.