Question

I would like to write metadata to a PNG image that I create.

My understanding of Java Advanced Image API is that I should use IIOMetadata, but code snippets I found seem overly complicated. Then I searched for a library and found Sanselan but it seems a bit old, and not very handy for writing metadata.

To actually create the image, I use

ImageIO.write(image, "png", baos);

I understand image metadatas are complex to handle due to its XML-like structure. Could anybody point me to a tutorial, solution, or library that will help?

Answer 1

I had to do the the same thing some days ago.. I have not found the exact solution on the internet either but looking at the com.sun.imageio.plugins.png.PNGMetadata class I could achieve some results..

To write a custom metadata to a PNG file:

public byte[] writeCustomData(BufferedImage buffImg, String key, String value) throws Exception {
    ImageWriter writer = ImageIO.getImageWritersByFormatName("png").next();

    ImageWriteParam writeParam = writer.getDefaultWriteParam();
    ImageTypeSpecifier typeSpecifier = ImageTypeSpecifier.createFromBufferedImageType(BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);

    //adding metadata
    IIOMetadata metadata = writer.getDefaultImageMetadata(typeSpecifier, writeParam);

    IIOMetadataNode textEntry = new IIOMetadataNode("tEXtEntry");
    textEntry.setAttribute("keyword", key);
    textEntry.setAttribute("value", value);

    IIOMetadataNode text = new IIOMetadataNode("tEXt");
    text.appendChild(textEntry);

    IIOMetadataNode root = new IIOMetadataNode("javax_imageio_png_1.0");
    root.appendChild(text);

    metadata.mergeTree("javax_imageio_png_1.0", root);

    //writing the data
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    ImageOutputStream stream = ImageIO.createImageOutputStream(baos);
    writer.setOutput(stream);
    writer.write(metadata, new IIOImage(buffImg, null, metadata), writeParam);
    stream.close();

    return baos.toByteArray();
}

Then, to read the data:

public String readCustomData(byte[] imageData, String key) throws IOException{
    ImageReader imageReader = ImageIO.getImageReadersByFormatName("png").next();

    imageReader.setInput(ImageIO.createImageInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(imageData)), true);

    // read metadata of first image
    IIOMetadata metadata = imageReader.getImageMetadata(0);

    //this cast helps getting the contents
    PNGMetadata pngmeta = (PNGMetadata) metadata; 
    NodeList childNodes = pngmeta.getStandardTextNode().getChildNodes();

    for (int i = 0; i < childNodes.getLength(); i++) {
        Node node = childNodes.item(i);
        String keyword = node.getAttributes().getNamedItem("keyword").getNodeValue();
        String value = node.getAttributes().getNamedItem("value").getNodeValue();
        if(key.equals(keyword)){
            return value;
        }
    }
    return null;
}