sMeta is a very simple, extensible Java API for reading metadata from files of various formats, such as ID3 tags from MP3 files, EXIF data from JPEG files, chunks from PNG files, etc.
sMeta is released as a JAR file, which you can add to your application
classpath to make use of. Some of the metadata implementations depend
on other JARs (included with this release in the "lib" directory). If you
need to use those implementations, the dependant JARs must be included in
your application classpath, too. See the JavaDoc documentation for the
MetadataResource in question, it will say if it depends on
some external library.
The general use of sMeta follows this pattern:
MetadataResourceFactoryManager instance.MetadataResourceFactory for this file type you are using.MetadataResource for this file.Here is an example snippet of code that accomplishes these steps:
String filePath = "/path/to/a/file.mp3";
// 1: get a MetadataResourceFactoryManager instance
MetadataResourceFactoryManager manager
= MetadataResourceFactoryManager.getDefaultManagerInstance();
File oneFile = new File(filePath);
// 2: get a MetadataResourceFactory for this file type
MetadataResourceFactory factory
= manager.getMetadataResourceFactory(oneFile);
try {
// 3: get a MetadataResource for this file
MetadataResource metaResource
= factory.getMetadataResourceInstance(oneFile);
// 4: print out all available metadata
Iterable<String> keys = metaResource.getParsedKeys();
for ( String key : keys ) {
Object metaValue = metaResource.getValue(key, Locale.getDefault());
// do something with metaValue here...
}
} catch ( MetadataNotSupportedException e ) {
System.err.println("File [" +oneFile.getAbsolutePath()
+"] is not supported by the ["
+factory.getClass().getName() +"] factory");
}
sMeta's MetadataResourceFactoryManager uses a set of properties files
to register support of different file types and MIME types. It will
look in up to three locations for a given type registration, and use
the first suitable implementation found. The search paths are classpath
relative:
The format of the properties file is just
where KEY is either a file extension or a MIME type. The CLASS is the fully-qualified class name of something that implements the magoffin.matt.meta.MetadataResourceFactory interface. For example (class names shorted for brevity):
The sMeta JAR file comes with a META-INF/smeta.properties file
pre-configured for the standard built-in types supported by sMeta. If you wish
to customize or extend these settings, the easiest way is to create a new
smeta.properties file and place that on your classpath. You can
override any of the built-in settings here, as this configuration will be
looked in before the build-in configuration.