ExifTool Forum

Hi,
Exiftool works nice, very nice, but, it would be more users-friendly if it should run under PHP.
PHP is more distributed than PERL ...
The reason why I ask this is simple, when running a web, sometimes you permit to load up images ...  Using GD from php do not return all stuff correctly of not at all.
For example, the lens-data are very poor. The reason for this is are the Makernotes  which are not fully retrieved in PHP and well in Exiftool.

Thanks in advance ...

I wanted exactly the same, tried to recode the perl libraries to php or C for php module, but gave up.
php does support reading exif data (via exif_read-data(), see manual), but it is limited in functionality and does not support multipage TIFF file and images with multiple IFD sections.
As an intermediate solution, I modified exiftool to my needs to it generates a PHP file as output, which you can include in your php code.
An array with one subarray per IFD section is generated if option -php is specified at the exiftool command line.
A flat array with keys "group:tag" is generated is option -php:flat is specified.
The patch for Image-Exif 8.74 is attached.

You can use it with:
system('exiftool -php YOURIMAGEFILE > /tmp/$$.php')
$data = require("/tmp/$$.php");
unlink("/tmp/$$.php");

If you want is as directly evaluatable code in php, you should probably remove the <?php and ?> code from exiftool, so you can run it from php width eval(`exiftool -php YOURIMAGEFILE`)

Regards, Marcel

Hi Marcel,

This is cool.  Do you think that it would be worthwhile including this patch in the official version?

- Phil

Edit: The patch includes some unimplemented code for the -ep option.  Did you ever make use of this?

Hi Phil,

I would love to see it in the official version!
But... I would suggest carefully checking the modifications I made, as I'm not an experience perl programmer.
I also found an error in my patch (didn't work properly when scanning multiple files).
I attached an update of my patch.

You can use the latest patched exiftool from php with the following code:
$x = eval(preg_replace("/^<\?php|\?>$/", "", `exiftool -php /tmp/Post/*`));
printf("Number of items: %d\n", count($x));

I briefly tested it in normal and flat array format with one JPEG and 1 up to 28 TIFF files.
TIFF files containing one to 29 scanned pages (With MS Office Document Imaging; the OCR content goes into EXIF data :-))
I think it needs some more testing, especially when using combinations of options (I didn't test that myself).

Kind regards, Marcel

Hi Marcel,

Yes, I'm ahead of you already.  Also, I don't think your version handled structured-output properly.

I've been playing with the code and have changed things to conform exactly with the -json feature.  Here is an example of how it works now:

> exiftool a.jpg b.jpg -php -g1 -filename
return Array(Array(
  "SourceFile" => "a.jpg",
  "System" => Array(
    "FileName" => "a.jpg"
  )
),
Array(
  "SourceFile" => "b.jpg",
  "System" => Array(
    "FileName" => "b.jpg"
  )
));
    2 image files read

And I'm using this PHP script to test it out:

<?php$array = eval(`exiftool -php -g1 -q -q -struct a.jpg b.jpg`);print_r($array);?>

This is a potentially useful modification, so I'm thinking that I'll include it in the next release.

- Phil

<?php" > a.php;exiftool -php a.jpg >> a.php;echo "?>

<?php$array = eval('return ' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);print_r($array);?>

<?phpeval('$array=' . `exiftool -php -q image.jpg`);print_r($array);?>