Exiftool from remote sources

Question

I'm trying to get image metadata from the internet using exiftool and tried to follow along with the piping example provided in exiftools docs, which I've linked below. This does not work as expected and instead returns an error of no file specified. I've tried putting the URL into quotes, changing around the command to use curl as an input into exiftool instead of piping, nothing seems to work. Any help would be appreciated.

https://exiftool.org/exiftool_pod.html#PIPING-EXAMPLES

Answer 1

Works just fine for me. Make sure to add the - to indicate reading from stdin. Here is an example:

> curl -s "https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/1f20f72dba83a169c623fbe652657a32?s=48&d=identicon&r=PG" | exiftool -
ExifTool Version Number         : 11.88
File Type                       : PNG
File Type Extension             : png
MIME Type                       : image/png
Image Width                     : 48
Image Height                    : 48
Bit Depth                       : 8
Color Type                      : RGB with Alpha
Compression                     : Deflate/Inflate
Filter                          : Adaptive
Interlace                       : Noninterlaced
Pixels Per Unit X               : 3780
Pixels Per Unit Y               : 3780
Pixel Units                     : meters
Image Size                      : 48x48
Megapixels                      : 0.002