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h221baker
h221baker

Reputation: 23

get meta information of a picture from link

Is there any way at all to get the meta information about a picture from a link without download the picture it self? Like i have this url to a picture http://www.abc.com/picture.jpeg, i want to get the meta information such as the dimensions of the picture with out actually downloading the picture it self. Of course I want to do this by writing a program, because there is large amount of pictures to go through.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2525

Answers (2)

deceze
deceze

Reputation: 522412

If all you have is a URL, than all you have is a URL. There's no magic incantation that will extract more data than there is from it. I.e.: No, you'll have to download the image.

If you have control over the server serving the image, you could make an HTTP HEAD request, have the server evaluate the image and output meta information about the image in the HTTP header, essentially creating a custom protocol for this purpose. That's a lot of ifs though and really depends on what you want to do.

Upvotes: 1

Javed Ahamed
Javed Ahamed

Reputation: 2934

I doubt you can get information about an image without downloading it. For example, when you visit a website and it has an image on it, the browser only knows the dimensions of the image after it has downloaded it. This is especially true if you want more advanced metadata such as time picture taken, iso, exposure, etc. The URL carries no information except if you can get some information from the parameters. Ex: http://www.abc.com/picture.jpeg?x=100

Sorry :/.

You might maybe want to look into downloading a thumbnail of the image, or maybe there is a way to not download the image pixel data but only the EXIF metadata which would cut down on download time/costs but still get you that metadata you want. I have no expertise in that subject though.

Upvotes: 1

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