Creating symlinks for each XMP keyword / substring in a tag

[robert_f]

Alright, so I'm sure the solution is simple, but after an hour of Googling I just cannot find how to resolve what seemed a straightforward task.

Because XMP tags have atrocious support, I've decided to workaround it via directories and symlinks. So far I've managed to type up this:

exiftool -r -ext png . '-symlink</home/user/Pictures/.tags/$keywords/%f'

But this doesn't work for any picture with multiple tags; exiftool simply treats the entire thing as a single string.

(Incidentally, would there be a method to remove symlinks if the file no longer contains the keyword that doesn't involve some complex bash piping?)

Thanks!

[StarGeek]

Off hand I don't see any easy way of doing this.  What would be required is a way to loop through the list of keywords and copy each individually to SymLink.

Maybe Phil can come up with some magic but the only way I can think of is to run exiftool multiple times and use the -listItem option.  First figure out the maximum number of keywords and then run exiftool that many times, incremeing the INDEX for each

Code Select Expand


exiftool -if "$keywords" -listItem 0 -r -ext png . '-symlink</home/user/Pictures/.tags/$keywords/%f'
exiftool -if "$keywords" -listItem 1 -r -ext png . '-symlink</home/user/Pictures/.tags/$keywords/%f'
exiftool -if "$keywords" -listItem 2 -r -ext png . '-symlink</home/user/Pictures/.tags/$keywords/%f'
...
exiftool -if "$keywords" -listItem <max-1> -r -ext png . '-symlink</home/user/Pictures/.tags/$keywords/%f'

[Alan Clifford]

I used keywords before I remembered keywords are iptc.  But shouldn't matter.

exiftool -keywords x-s1_3892.jpg

Code Select Expand

Keywords                        : Barbados, Chancery Lane, swamp


#!/bin/bash

filename="x-s1_3892.jpg"

echo "<${filename}>"

# keywords=$(exiftool -s3 -keywords x-s1_3892.jpg | tr , "\n" | tr -d " ")
keywords=$(exiftool -s3 -keywords "${filename}" | tr , "\n" | tr -d " ")

echo "<${keywords}>"

for i in ${keywords}; do

  echo "<${i}>"
  ln -s "${filename}" "${i}"

done

Code Select Expand

cellini:test alan$ ls -l
total 12448
lrwxr-xr-x  1 alan  staff       13 23 Apr 19:49 Barbados@ -> x-s1_3892.jpg
lrwxr-xr-x  1 alan  staff       13 23 Apr 19:49 ChanceryLane@ -> x-s1_3892.jpg
-rwxr--r--  1 alan  staff      309 23 Apr 19:48 keywordlink.sh*
lrwxr-xr-x  1 alan  staff       13 23 Apr 19:49 swamp@ -> x-s1_3892.jpg
-rw-r--r--  1 alan  staff  6365223 23 Apr 19:24 x-s1_3892.jpg


[robert_f]

Off hand I don't see any easy way of doing this.  What would be required is a way to loop through the list of keywords and copy each individually to SymLink.

Darn. So much for trying to optimize my bash script. 
Just for future knowledge though, this won't create incorrectly sorted and/or dead symlinks if the file has less tags than the max, right?

[StarGeek]

Just for future knowledge though, this won't create incorrectly sorted and/or dead symlinks if the file has less tags than the max, right?

To avoid that, I included the -if option.  If you use the -listItem option beyond the maximum number of entries, it will return undefined and skip that file.

Example. Here I try to copy the first (0) keyword to Description.  Works correctly.  Clear description and try to copy the fifth keyword (4), which doesn't exist.  Throws a warning and nothing is copied.

Code Select Expand

C:\>exiftool -G1 -a -s -Keywords -Description y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Zero, One, Two, Three

C:\>exiftool -P -overwrite_original -listItem 0 "-Description<Keywords" y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
    1 image files updated

C:\>exiftool -G1 -a -s -Keywords -Description y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Zero, One, Two, Three
[XMP-dc]        Description                     : Zero

C:\>exiftool -P -overwrite_original -Description= y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
    1 image files updated

C:\>exiftool -P -overwrite_original -listItem 4 "-Description<Keywords" y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from y:/!temp/Test4.jpg
    0 image files updated
    1 image files unchanged

C:\>exiftool -G1 -a -s -Keywords -Description y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Zero, One, Two, Three

Remember to change double quotes into single quotes for linux/Mac.

But expanding upon Alan's idea, it might be better to script it.  Except rather than running exiftool on every file (see Common Mistake #3), dump the full list into a temp file.  For example, run
exiftool -p "$Filename,$Keywords" /path/to/files/
Then extract the file name, tr the rest, and run the ln loop.