IPTC values set in jpg with exiftool no longer get applied on upload

Thanks for your report, and for taking the time to post the details about your rules and the link to an example image; very helpful.

I uploaded the example image to my test system and the IPTC fields were mapped to the Title and Caption fields without any errors or problems. I do not know why this is not working on your system.

Have you gone to the Media/Edit Media screen for this image and confirmed that the values are missing from the data for the image itself and not just the “media wrapper page” display? Have you tried using the “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” link in the Save metabox of the Media/Edit Media screen to re-run the mapping rules for the item?

Any additional information you can provide will be helpful. Thanks for your understanding and your patience.

Thanks for testing.
The values are in the images, confirmed by downloading some of them and running exiftool on them.

You asked:

> Have you tried using the “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” link in the Save metabox of the Media/Edit Media screen to re-run the mapping rules for the item?

Didn’t realize it was possible to manually map them individually.
Yes, this works; thanks.

But it doesn’t happen on upload of media. Yet in

IPTC & EXIF Processing Options

this is checked:

Enable IPTC/EXIF Mapping when adding new media
Check this option to enable mapping when uploading new media (attachments).
Does NOT affect the operation of the “Map” buttons on the bulk edit, single edit and settings screens.

Regarding that last line above, yes, map in bulk edit also works.
However, it appears to only allow doing about 10 images at a time, which is not very practical given that there are thousands of images (we often post dozens for a single river outing).

Ah, I see it is possible in screen options to set the number of items displayed up to 999. That helps. Mapping March 2016 images now.

I see in IPTC & EXIF Processing Options there’s a button for
Map All Attachments, Taxonomy Terms Now

I hesitate to use it, because for some of the older images I manually put in descriptions. I suppose I could say keep existing text for descriptions and just do it.

However, there’s still the basic problem: why aren’t the images getting mapped on upload?

Thanks for your updates and for all the testing and exploration you’ve done.

You wrote “But it doesn’t happen on upload of media.” I realize now that I did not ask which method you are using to upload new items. Are you using the “Add Media” Media Manager Modal (popup) Window on the Edit post/page screen? Or, are you using the Media/Add New (Upload New Media) admin screen? I have re-tested both of these, but perhaps I am missing something about the way you are adding items. You could try whatever method you haven’t used and see if there’s a difference in the symptoms.

It is also possible that some other plugin on your site is affecting the process. Are there other image/media related plugins active on your site?

You have found the “Map All Attachments, Taxonomy Terms Now” button on the IPTC/EXIF mapping screen. There are similar buttons for Standard Field Mapping and Custom Field Mapping as well. If you set the “Existing Text” dropdown to “Keep” you can add Description values when the item’s existing value is empty and preserve anything you’ve entered previously. You can change the dropdown to “Keep” and click the “Map … Now” button to make “Keep” a temporary setting. If you scroll to the bottom and click “Save Changes” the Keep setting will be saved.

Finally, note that WordPress fills in the Title and Caption fields during upload, before the MLA mapping rules are run. Your first post gave your rule as “Caption 2#120 caption-or-abstract Keep“. The “Keep” value of that rule will leave the WordPress Caption value intact, ignoring your IPTC rule.

Thanks for your persistence and for any new information you can provide.

Ah, good point. Neither, I’m using XMLRPC, as in:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7607473/how-to-create-new-post-with-photo-attached-in-wordpress-using-xmlrpc

Trying it with Add Media, yes, the fields are mapped.

So apparently it’s something that changed in handling of XMLRPC.

Yes, using Keep for Map All works; thanks.

What it actually does for Title is it prepends the IPTC title to the previous title.

So now, thanks to your expert debugging leads, we’re down to why doesn’t XMLRPC do the mapping.

-jsq

The problem started occurring about December 8th 2015.
I haven’t changed the XMLRPC software I’m using since August 2015.
(Not clear how anything on my end could affect this anyway.)

The changelog for Media Library Assistant isn’t dated per version,
but it looks like I upgraded from 2.21 to 2.22 on December 8th.
So perhaps there’s a bug in 2.22 that affects XMLRPC.

-jsq

Thanks for your updates and the additional test results. Thanks as well for posting a link to the Stack Overflow topic; very helpful.

This is the first support request I’ve had for an XMLRPC issue. You mentioned “the XMLRPC software I’m using“; can you tell me more about that so I can get a copy for my own testing purposes? I will also have a look through the XMLRPC code and see if there are additional hooks I might need to use for that method.

You mentioned updating MLA on December 8th. I can’t remember changing anything in the IPTC/EXIF mapping logic in that update but I will investigate further. Do you remember anything about which WordPress versions you were using and any WordPress updates around that time?

You wrote “What it actually does for Title is it prepends the IPTC title to the previous title.” That sounds like a defect, not a feature. Are you saying the “Keep” option for that field doesn’t retain the existing Title?

Thanks for your help and your patience.

I suspect that changes I made in the MLA v2.15 to v2.20 update to reduce memory and processing footprint have disabled the mapping support during XMLRPC uploads. To test that hypothesis I have made a small change in the plugin loading code.

I have uploaded a new Development Version dated 20160318 that contains the fix. To get the Development Version, follow the instructions in this earlier topic:

Shortcode not working in (special) widget

It would be great if you can install the Development Version and let me know if it works for you. Of course, if any other problems emerge I want to know about them as well.

You’re welcome.

The software I’m using is just a front end to feed parameters to the code from the stack overflow topic. I can send it to you, but it won’t help much.

Keep retains the original title and prepends the new one to it.

Your diagnosis seems correct, because the MLA development version maps the parameters correctly.

There is an oddity that images uploaded via XMLRPC with that MLA version don’t seem to show up in Media -> Assistant, although they do show up in Media -> Library.

Thanks much for your patience and the fix!

-jsq

Thank you for taking the time to install and test the Development Version; I am happy to hear my suspicion was correct and that the fix worked.

You wrote “Keep retains the original title and prepends the new one to it.” I cannot reproduce this on my test system using the “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” link on the Media/Edit screen; it may be specific to the XMLPRC process. If you could try a quick experiment it would be a big help:

1. Go to the Media/Edit screen for one of your damaged/prepended items.
2. Replace the existing Title value with something short like “Test Title”, then click “Update” to save the manual value.
3. Click “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” to run the mapping rules.
4. See if the “Test Title” value is retained, appended to the IPTC value or replaced entirely.
5. Delete the Title value, click “Update”.
6. Click “Map IPTC/EXIF metadata” to run the mapping rules.
7. See if the IPTC value is mapped correctly.

If you can do that, let me know the results.

You wrote “There is an oddity that images uploaded via XMLRPC with that MLA version don’t seem to show up in Media -> Assistant …“. I cannot imagine why that would happen, unless the database record for these items is somehow different from those uploaded by other methods. Could you try another experiment:

1. Find one of those items in the Media/Library screen and get its ID. You can find this in the “grid” view by clicking on a thumbnail and noting the “item=” value in the browser URL bar or hovering over the “Edit more details” link and noting the “post=” value. In the “list” view, hover over the “Edit” link for an item.
2. Go to the Media/Assistant screen and enter then ID number in the Search Media text box, then click “Search Media”.
3. See if the item shows up in the Media/Assistant submenu table.

I will try to set up an XMLPRC test environment of my own, but that may take some time. In the interim, and additional details you can provide would be very helpful. Thanks!

I have released MLA version 2.25, which includes the fix for XMLRPC processing.

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have any problems or further questions regarding the new version. Thanks again for working with me on this topic.

Apologies for the delayed response.

Thanks for the new version. I will test it, including the other tests you indicated, and let you know the results.

Thanks again,
-jsq