Android Photo Date Correction

Over the years, you could say that I’ve gone through a couple phones.

I’ve had to copy & restore data from the old phone to the new phone numerous times.

As a result, my photos have become wildly disorganized. Photo dates no longer match the actual date the photo was taken, and it’s become impossible to quickly find & pull up a specific photo that I have in mind.

Instead of relying on an app (couldn’t find anything to be honest), I wrote a Python script to restore everything back to its original state.

It reads a JPG’s EXIF date and applies it to the accessed/modified file date. If a file doesn’t have valid EXIF data, it reads the date from one of three formats in the file name: YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS or YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS or YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS, then applies that to the file’s timestamp instead, even if the filename should include funky “(0)” or “(1)” characters, etc.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os, re, time, argparse, exifread

def date_correction(args):
    '''Method for Android date correction of /sdcard/DCIM/Camera'''
    for dirpath, dirnames, filenames in os.walk(args.directory):
        for filename in [f for f in filenames if f.endswith('.jpg') or f.endswith('.jpeg') or f.endswith('.mp4') or f.endswith('.3gp')]:
            fn   = os.path.join(dirpath, filename)
            f    = open(fn, 'rb')
            tags = exifread.process_file(f)
            if 'EXIF DateTimeOriginal' in tags.keys():
                ts = str(tags['EXIF DateTimeOriginal'])
            else:
                ts = None
            if ts is not None:
                print 'Found date in EXIF metadata: ' + fn + ' (' + ts + ')'
                ft = time.mktime(time.strptime(ts, '%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S'))
                os.utime(fn, (ft, ft))
            else:
                match = re.search(r'((?P<y1>[0-9]{8}_[0-9]{6})|(?P<y2>[0-9]{4}\-[0-9]{2}\-[0-9]{2}_[0-9]{6})|(?P<y3>[0-9]{4}\-[0-9]{2}\-[0-9]{2}_[0-9]{2}\-[0-9]{2}\-[0-9]{2}))', filename)
                if match:
                    if match.group('y1') is not None:
                        print 'Found date in filename: ' + fn + ' (' + match.group('y1') + ')'
                        t  = match.group('y1')
                        ft = time.mktime(time.strptime(t, '%Y%m%d_%H%M%S'))
                        os.utime(fn, (ft, ft))
                    elif match.group('y2') is not None:
                        print 'Found date in filename: ' + fn + ' (' + match.group('y2') + ')'
                        t  = match.group('y2')
                        ft = time.mktime(time.strptime(t, '%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S'))
                        os.utime(fn, (ft, ft))
                    elif match.group('y3') is not None:
                        print 'Found date in filename: ' + fn + ' (' + match.group('y3') + ')'
                        t  = match.group('y3')
                        ft = time.mktime(time.strptime(t, '%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S'))
                        os.utime(fn, (ft, ft))
                    else:
                        print 'Failed to get file date for ' + fn

def main():
    try:
        print '\033[92m' + '\nAndroid Photo Date Correction\n' + '\033[0m'
        parser   = argparse.ArgumentParser()
        required = parser.add_argument_group('required arguments')
        required.add_argument('-d', '--directory', metavar='[directory]', required=True, help='Photo source directory')
        args = parser.parse_args()
        date_correction(args)
    except ImportError, e:
        print 'There must be something missing\n'
        print e.args[0]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

In order for this script be functional:

1. Make the script executable.

root at rpi in ~
# chmod +x photodates.py

2. Install the exifread python module.

root at rpi in ~
# pip install exifread 
Downloading/unpacking exifread 
  Downloading ExifRead-2.1.2-py2-none-any.whl (47kB): 47kB downloaded 
Installing collected packages: exifread 
Successfully installed exifread 
Cleaning up...

3. Install an SSH server on your phone and mount with SSHFS.

root at rpi in ~
# mkdir /media/e 
root at rpi in ~
# sshfs -p 2222 ssh@10.0.5.116:/storage/emulated/0 /media/e

4. Go into your phone’s DCIM/Camera directory and execute (don’t forget the two backticks surrounding pwd).

root at rpi in ~
# cd /media/e/DCIM/Camera 
root at rpi in /media/e/DCIM/Camera
# ~/photodates -d `pwd` 

Android Photo Date Correction 

Found date in EXIF metadata: /media/usb001/BAK/n6p_backup/DCIM/Camera/2010-09-24_23-21-09_489.jpg (2010:09:25 05:21:06) 
Found date in EXIF metadata: /media/usb001/BAK/n6p_backup/DCIM/Camera/2010-09-29_19-50-24_185.jpg (2010:09:30 01:50:21) 
Found date in EXIF metadata: /media/usb001/BAK/n6p_backup/DCIM/Camera/2010-10-04_19-35-53_24.jpg (2010:10:05 01:35:51) 
Found date in EXIF metadata: /media/usb001/BAK/n6p_backup/DCIM/Camera/2010-10-04_21-37-40_163.jpg (2010:10:05 03:37:37) 
Found date in EXIF metadata: /media/usb001/BAK/n6p_backup/DCIM/Camera/2010-10-07_19-37-45_701.jpg (2010:10:08 02:37:42)

For 5.5 gigs of photos & video, this took about a minute and a half to complete.

I realize this fix should probably exist as an Android app instead of a linux-based script. If this post gets adequate search volume, perhaps I’ll consider building an app-based solution.