How to get 'Date' file attribute in C#

Question

I have some pictures with date created set to when I unzipped them and date modified set to some strange moment in the past. However, the 'Date' attribute shows a coorect creation time (the time when I actually took these pictures). Is there a way to access that attribute in C# ? Both File.GetCreationTime and FileInfo.CreationTime give me the incorrect 'Date created'.

This is what I tried:

var allFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles(".");
foreach (var s in allFiles)
{
    Console.WriteLine(s + " " + File.GetCreationTime(s));
}

DirectoryInfo dir = new DirectoryInfo(".");
FileInfo[] files = dir.GetFiles().OrderByDescending(p => p.CreationTime).ToArray();

foreach (var f in files)
{
    Console.WriteLine(f.Name + " " + f.CreationTime + "/" + f.LastAccessTime + "/" + f.LastWriteTime);
}

EDIT:

This 'Date' is actually a 'Date taken' field and it's not a file attribute but a part of metadata of the image files.

As I said, I tried `File.GetCreationTime` and `FileInfo.CreationTime`. See edit — Maciej Szpakowski, Feb 20 '17 at 02:57
See https://dzone.com/articles/extracting-file-metadata-c-and-0 — NineBerry, Feb 20 '17 at 02:58
Links inside the article don't work. At least I've learned that this is metadata I'm interested in and more specifically Photo.DateTaken field. There are some articles about it. — Maciej Szpakowski, Feb 20 '17 at 03:06
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/58649/how-to-get-the-exif-data-from-a-file-using-c-sharp — Keith Nicholas, Feb 20 '17 at 03:09

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 20 '17 at 03:47

Try this:

public DateTime? GetDateTakenFromBitmap(string bitmapFileName)
{
    using (var bm = System.Drawing.Bitmap.FromFile(bitmapFileName))
    {
        return
            bm
                .PropertyItems
                .Where(x => x.Id == 0x9003)
                .Select(x =>
                {
                    DateTime dt;
                    var enc = new ASCIIEncoding();
                    var parsed = DateTime.TryParseExact(
                        enc.GetString(x.Value, 0, x.Len - 1),
                        "yyyy:MM:dd HH:mm:ss",
                        CultureInfo.CurrentCulture,
                        DateTimeStyles.None,
                        out dt);
                    return parsed ? (DateTime?)dt : null;
                })
                .FirstOrDefault();
    }
}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 20 '17 at 03:20

Yes you can. These kinds of meta data are known as EXIF tags in a JPG file.

Basically you need to load the JPG into a System.Drawing.Bitmap, then enumerate the bitmap's PropertyItems collection looking for id 0x9003, which correlates to original date. When you find that Id, the corresponding Value will be a string representation of the original date.

You can search for EXIF tags to list all of the available IDs.

How to get 'Date' file attribute in C#

2 Answers2