Feature Requests

Thanks for your interest, the good words and for these suggestions. I want to make sure I understand your “IPTC/EXIF template” idea. Do you mean that you want to add new IPTC/EXIF information to the image files themselves as they are uploaded?

Up to this point I have not considered any features that alter the file name or contents. If you can give me more details I can think about these features for a future MLA version.

Hi David ??

Yes, that’s exactly it, for example, I like to add copyright info, the site URL and a few other EXIF/IPTC infos to my pictures before I upload them. Many plugins support reading that info and automatically displaying it next to the picture, and also it can be seen in many offline picture viewers, so I’d like to not have to manually go through the process of adding it to each image offline before I upload it to my blog. it would be sooo convenient. ??

It seems the best way would be to create a section in the settings where all of this info can be entered and then saved as (for example) “template 1”, “Template 2”, “My Copyright Template”, etc. and then a choice to use whichever template automatically upon each image upload. And since the templates would all be saved and named, it would also be real easy to manually use one on 1 (or more) images after they’ve been uploaded as well (in case wanting to change the info later or something.

Thanks David!

Thank you for taking the time to expand on your idea and give me more specifics. As I said, I haven’t yet considered any plugin features that would modify the content of images or other attachments. I will continue to think this through and consider it for a future MLA version. Thanks again for your interest.

I have released version 1.70, which you can use to modify the file name during the upload process.

Have a look at the “MLA Custom Field and IPTC/EXIF Mapping Actions and Filters (Hooks)” section in the Settings/Media Library Assistant Documentation tab. It contains an outline of the hooks I’ve added and a link to the mla-mapping-hooks-example.php.txt file; a simple stand-alone plugin you can use to hold any custom code you need.

In your case, the mla_upload_prefilter can be used to modify the file name. The $file array contains the name element, which you can update before passing it back as the filter result.

Sadly, none of the hooks will let you update the IPTC and EXIF data in the image file itself. I am looking into that, but it is a much more difficult problem and will take time to address. I will leave this topic unresolved for now. I will report my progress and any solutions I come up with by posting updates here.

For your information, here is a link to another recent support topic that also concerns updating IPTC and EXIF information in the actual image file:

Auto Rotate Image

Thanks again for your questions and for your interest in the plugin.

It is a good embryo idea to let MLA handle the mangle of files

We have two our own plugins to mangle files on upload:
Exif folder upload
This plugin Organize your JPG images, on upload, into folders by the “Taken with camera” date if possible.

File Name Cleaner
Simply turns:
_Family_Picture DC2099 ___tEsT swedish ?ker--.JPEG
into:
myprefix-family-picture-dc2099-test-swedish-aker.jpg

The latter is inspired by “UploadPlus” – File name cleaner plugin. They have the option of “Transliterate UTF8 chars into ASCII” and take good care of left-langs / chryllic / Chineese things… Our version is also comaptible with Replace media and replaces character more consistant / limit filename lenghts 200 char rule etc etc etc..

I would gladly put theese 2 plugins into Media Library Assistant instead to keep it All in one place.

/ J

Jonas,

Thanks, as always, for your comments and suggestions. As my earlier post indicates I am starting some work in this area and this kind of material is really helpful.