In the new Photos OSX app, where is the machine-readable photo information stored

photosphotos.app

In iPhoto, there was an AlbumData.xml file with information about all the photos like title, filename, etcetera. I was planning to use it from within a Python program to automatically export photos in certain albums to my website.

With the new OSX Photos app, I cannot find an AlbumData.xml or a plist file with the same information. The ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/Database/apdb/ directory contains serveral .apdb files, which are sqlite databases. I inspected the schema in two of them but didn't find any list of photos. (Note: "apdb" stands for "aperture db", so it seems Apple re-used quite a bit of aperture in the new Photos app.)

So… I want to get my hand on the filenames of my photos, their titles, which albums they're in. Where is this data stored?

(Googling is very hard because of the generic 'photos' search term…)

Best Answer

The "list of photos" is in the RKMaster table.

cd ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/Database/apdb
sqlite3 Library.apdb
select modelId,fileName,imagePath from RKMaster;

Do .schema RKMaster to see the other fields of the table.

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