GetItemDate

GetItemDate outputs the date and/or time when a file's contents were created For pictures, this is Date Taken. For videos, this is Media Created It might produce useful results for other file types, but this not been verified.

GetItemDate was designed to assist creating scripts that organize files by their creation date.

Syntax

GetItemDate [-dateonly] [-timeonly] [-iso] [-datesep <sep>] [-timesep <sep>] [-dtsep <sep>] [-?] <filename>
	-dateonly, -do : Only output the date part
	-timeonly, -to : Only output the time part
	-iso           : Use ISO 8601 date and time separators
	                It is an abbreviation for: -datesep "-" -dtsep "T"  -timesep ":"
	                which yields: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss
	-datesep, -ds  : Specify the date separator (Default: "-")
	-dtsep, -dts   : Specify the date-time separator (Default: " ")
	-timesep, -ts  : Specify the time separator (Default: ":")
	-?, -h, -help  : Show help message and exit
	<filename>     : The file to get the date from
	                Absolute paths, relative paths, and environment variable replacement are all supported
	                Only a single filename is supported. Trying to specify more than one filename results in an error

GetItemDate recognizes either forward slash or hyphen to indicate a parameter. So, -timesep and /timesep are equally good and mean the same thing.

Output to Standard Output (STDOUT)

GetItemDate writes the results to the standard console application output (stdout).

The default is to provide both date and time. You can request to only get the date (-dateonly or -do) or to only get the time (-timeonly or -to). (Specify both and you get nothing.)

The separators between the date components defaults to "-", but you can change that to anything that you want, including no separator at all The separators between the date and the time defaults to a space, but is similarly configurable. The separators between the time components defaults to ":", but is also similarly configurable.

The order of the components is not configurable, it is always: year month day hour minute seconds

Year is four digits, the other components are two digits, zero padded as needed

If the file does not have creation date information or is not found or there is any other error, GetItemDate does not write anything to standard output (stdout).

Output to Standard Error (STDERR)

Any error messages are written to the error stream (stderr), so that they are easily separated from the output. Errors would be parameter errors or if the specified file is not found.

Note that GetItemDate does NOT consider it an error if the file is found but does not contain Item Time information. In that case, nothing is written to either STDOUT or STDERR.

Return code (a/k/a %ERRORLEVEL%, $LASTEXITCODE, ...)

GetItemDate also provides a return code to show success or failure. Return codes are 0 for success, > 0 for error, < 0 for having no results and also no error (ie. the help message).

Examples

These examples use a fictitious image file IMAGE.JPG containing a picture that was taken on 6 January 2021 at 9:07:05 AM. (Month, day, hour, minute, and seconds were chosen to demonstrate zero padding for numbers < 10.)

Default output

The default output format from GetItemDate is: YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG
STDOUT	2021-01-06 09:07:05
STDERR
Return code	0

Date only

The parameter to output only the date is either /dateonly or /do (or -dateonly or -do).

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG /do
STDOUT	2021-01-06
STDERR
Return code	0

Time only

The parameter to output only the date is either /timeonly or /to (or -timeonly or -to).

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG -to
STDOUT	09:07:05
STDERR
Return code	0

No separators at all

This is how you would get date and time into a single string with no separators (YYYYMMDDhhmmss).

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG /ds "" /dts "" /ts ""
STDOUT	20210106090705
STDERR
Return code	0

Separate each field with a colon

This will give you a colon between each field (YYYY:MM:DD:hh:mm:ss). Note that time already uses colon, so we didn't need to specify /timesep ":" (although we could have if we wanted to).

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG /ds ":" /dts ":"
STDOUT	2021:01:06:09:07:05
STDERR
Return code	0

ISO 8601 format

Return the date and time in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss). This is the same as specifying /datesep "-" /dtsep "T" /timesep ":".

Note that GetItemDate does not support time zone offset or fractions of a second.

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG /iso
STDOUT	2021-01-06T09:07:05
STDERR
Return code	0

Missing parameter error

The parameters /datesep, /dtsep, and /timesep must be followed by another parameter giving the separator value. If not, then GetItemDate reports this as an error.

Note that this parameter is processed by the quoting rules are used by whatever invokes GetItemDate. So, if this is coming from the command prompt and your separator value is an empty string or contains a space, then you will need quotation marks around the value.

Command Line	GetItemDate IMAGE.JPG /ds
STDOUT
STDERR	Missing argument for /ds
Return code	1

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