Automatically rename files based on metadata

Automatically renaming files based on metadata can be accomplished using scripts that extract specific metadata from each file (e.g., date created, author, file type, etc.) and rename the files accordingly. This is especially common for photo, video, and document files.

Here’s a general overview and example using Python:

Python Script to Rename Files Based on Metadata

For Images (Using EXIF Metadata)

python
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import os
from PIL import Image
from PIL.ExifTags import TAGS
from datetime import datetime

def get_exif_data(image_path):
    image = Image.open(image_path)
    exif_data = {}
    info = image._getexif()
    if info:
        for tag, value in info.items():
            decoded = TAGS.get(tag, tag)
            exif_data[decoded] = value
    return exif_data

def rename_images_by_date(directory):
    for filename in os.listdir(directory):
        if filename.lower().endswith(('.jpg', '.jpeg', '.png')):
            full_path = os.path.join(directory, filename)
            exif = get_exif_data(full_path)
            if 'DateTimeOriginal' in exif:
                date_str = exif['DateTimeOriginal']
                date_obj = datetime.strptime(date_str, '%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S')
                new_filename = date_obj.strftime('%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S') + os.path.splitext(filename)[1]
                new_path = os.path.join(directory, new_filename)
                os.rename(full_path, new_path)
                print(f'Renamed to: {new_filename}')

# Example usage
rename_images_by_date('/path/to/your/images')

For Videos or Audio (Using Media Metadata with mutagen or hachoir)

python
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from mutagen.easyid3 import EasyID3
import os

def rename_audio_files(directory):
    for filename in os.listdir(directory):
        if filename.lower().endswith('.mp3'):
            try:
                path = os.path.join(directory, filename)
                audio = EasyID3(path)
                artist = audio.get('artist', ['Unknown'])[0]
                title = audio.get('title', ['Unknown'])[0]
                new_name = f"{artist} - {title}.mp3"
                os.rename(path, os.path.join(directory, new_name))
                print(f"Renamed: {filename} -> {new_name}")
            except Exception as e:
                print(f"Error with file {filename}: {e}")

# Example usage
rename_audio_files('/path/to/your/audio')

For Documents (Using python-docx for Word files or PyPDF2 for PDFs)

python
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import os
from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

def rename_pdfs_by_title(directory):
    for filename in os.listdir(directory):
        if filename.lower().endswith('.pdf'):
            path = os.path.join(directory, filename)
            try:
                reader = PdfReader(path)
                title = reader.metadata.title or 'Untitled'
                new_name = f"{title}.pdf".replace('/', '_')  # Avoid illegal characters
                os.rename(path, os.path.join(directory, new_name))
                print(f"Renamed to: {new_name}")
            except Exception as e:
                print(f"Could not process {filename}: {e}")

# Example usage
rename_pdfs_by_title('/path/to/your/pdfs')

Notes:

• Always test scripts on copies of your data to avoid accidental data loss.

• File naming collisions should be handled (e.g., appending a counter).

• You may need additional libraries:

  bash
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  pip install Pillow mutagen python-docx PyPDF2
  

If you need the script tailored for a specific file type or metadata field, I can provide that too.