Reading/Writing tags or keywords using Apple Photos SDK

Question

Does anybody know if Apple’s Photos SDK allows us to fetch, or even modify tags on assets stored in the user’s Photos library?

From the official docs I understand that the SDK allows us to change the « favorite » status, show/hide assets, or even find an asset’s location, but I couldn’t find a way to extract a photo’s tags (keywords) stored by the macOS Photos app.

Is it a feature lacking from the current Photos SDK, or is there any way I can access these metadata?

Thanks

Answer 1

Here is a sample how you can get Metadata using CIImage.properties from PHAsset.

fileprivate extension PHAsset {
    func printMetadata() {
        let options = PHContentEditingInputRequestOptions()

        requestContentEditingInput(with: options) { (contentEditingInput: PHContentEditingInput?, _) -> Void in
            let img = CIImage(contentsOf: contentEditingInput!.fullSizeImageURL!)
            print(img?.properties)
        }
    }
}

For iCloud stored images add the following line:

options.isNetworkAccessAllowed = true

I haven't found Image metadata in PHAsset as well.

For writing CIImage metadata you can try CIImage.settingProperties(_:) method.