Automatically reading GPS information from featured image and adding as post meta in WordPress

As for getting GPS information into the images, I used the following:

GPSLogger¹ on my phone; this can be set to create GPX, KML and txt files, so parsing them shouldn't be a problem
GPicSync² to read the according, closest entry from the GPX file and write it to my photos

This way I didn't have to buy an expensive GPS unit for my camera.

Unfortunately the solution requires:

PHP exec function to be available
exiftool³ to be installed in $PATH

I could not find any pure PHP implementation that could read GPS information from EXIF reliably.

add_action( 'init', 'extra_exif_init' );

function extra_exif_init() {
    add_filter( 'wp_read_image_metadata', 'read_extra_exif', 1, 3 );
}

function read_extra_exif ( $meta, $filepath ='', $sourceImageType = '' ) {

    if (empty($filepath) || !is_file($filepath) || !is_readable($filepath)) {
        // "{$filepath} doesn't exist"
        return $meta;
    }

    if ( $sourceImageType != IMAGETYPE_JPEG ) {
        // not JPEG means no EXIF
        return $meta;
    }

    $extra = array (
        'geo_latitude' => 'GPSLatitude',
        'geo_longitude' => 'GPSLongitude',
        'geo_altitude' => 'GPSAltitude',
        // feel free to add elements here, eg. 'lens' => 'LensID'
    );

    $rextra = array_flip($extra);

    $args = $metaextra = array();

    foreach ($extra as $metaid => $exiftoolID ) {
        if (!isset($meta[ $metaid ])) {
            $args[] = $exiftoolID;
        }
    }

    if (!empty($args)) {
        $cmd = 'exiftool -s -' . join(' -', $args) . ' ' . $filepath;
        // "Extracting extra EXIF for {$filepath} with command {$cmd}"

        exec( $cmd, $exif, $retval);

        if ($retval == 0 ) {
            foreach ( $exif as $cntr => $data ) {
                $data = explode (' : ', $data );
                $data = array_map('trim', $data);
                if ( $data[0] == 'GPSLatitude' || $data[0] == 'GPSLongitude' )
                    $data[1] = exif_gps2dec( $data[1] );
                elseif ( $data[0] == 'GPSAltitude' )
                    $data[1] = exif_gps2alt( $data[1] );

                $metaextra[ $rextra[ $data[0] ] ] = $data[1];
            }
        }
    }

    $meta = array_merge($meta, $metaextra);

    return $meta;
}

function exif_gps2dec ( $string ) {
    //103 deg 20' 38.33" E
    preg_match( "/([0-9.]+)\s?+deg\s?+([0-9.]+)'\s?+([0-9.]+)\"\s?+([NEWS])/", trim($string), $matches );

    $dd = $matches[1] + ( ( ( $matches[2] * 60 ) + ( $matches[3] ) ) / 3600 );
    if ( $matches[4] == "S" || $matches[4] == "W" )
        $dd = $dd * -1;
    return round($dd,6);
}

function exif_gps2alt ( $string ) {
    //2062.6 m Above Sea Level
    preg_match( "/([0-9.]+)\s?+m/", trim($string), $matches );

    $alt = $matches[1];
    if ( stristr( $string, 'below') )
        $alt = $alt * -1;
    return $alt;
}

Now, to add the actual meta to the post, I'll extend my previous auto-tagger⁴. Just add the following inside the autotag_by_photo function found there:

// GPS
$try = array ( 'geo_latitude', 'geo_longitude', 'geo_altitude' );
foreach ( $try as $kw ) {
    $curr = get_post_meta ( $post->ID, $kw, true );
    // "Current {$kw} for {$post->ID} is: ${curr}"

    if ( isset ( $meta['image_meta'][ $kw ] ) && !empty( $meta['image_meta'][ $kw ] ) ) {
        if ( empty ( $curr ) ) {
            add_post_meta( $post->ID, $kw, $meta['image_meta'][ $kw ], true );
        }
        elseif ( $curr != $meta['image_meta'][ $kw ] ) {
            update_post_meta( $post->ID, $kw, $meta['image_meta'][ $kw ], $curr );
        }
    }
}

(Oh, by the way: this entry was written by Peter Molnar, and originally posted on petermolnar dot net.)