I have a skeleton in my photographic closet!  I enjoy hacking pictures as much as I enjoy shooting them.  Before digital photography I got my jollies the old fashioned way with chemicals:  dark room chemicals.  I still get all emotional when I remember the scent of a fixer.   Ahhh — those were the days.

Now,  instead of inhaling fumes in the dark, I hang out on picture sites:   SmugMug is my current favorite.   Over the last year I have uploaded thousands of carefully cataloged  images:  you can view them here.   I may not be much of photographer but when it comes to image metadata my anal analytic side shines.  I can EXIF, IPTC and GEOTAG with the best of them.

Because I tweak metadata online, and I suffer from a retentive character flaw,  it’s only natural that I would seek to download my sacred metadata.  This is what SmugMug’s API is for!  When I started experimenting with the SmugMug API I made the mistake of reading the documentation.  SmugMug documentation is,  at best,  a “work in progress.”  It may help but probably not!  I found trolling the web looking for code examples more productive.

To help the next SmugMug API geek I am posting a fragment of a simple command line C# metadata dump utility I put together.   The core of the program  is shown below and all the C# source is available here.  This program is to trivial to license so help yourself.

namespace SmugMugMDDumper
{
class Program
{
private const string xmlHeader = @"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""UTF-8""?>";

// defaults - insert your own SmugMug apikey, password, email here
// defaults are used if corresponding command line arguments are missing
private const string apiKey = "<YOUR SMUGMUG APIKEY>";
private const string passWord = "<YOUR SMUGMUG PASSWORD";
private const string emailAddress = "<YOUR SMUGMUG EMAIL>";
private const string outFile = @"c:\temp\smugmugdata.xml";

static void Main(string[] args)
{
try
{
DataSet ds = new DataSet();
XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
Arguments comline = new Arguments(args);
SmugmugMetaData smugmd = new SmugmugMetaData();

// parse and set any command line arguments
if (comline["help"] != null)
{
string __helpMsg = @"
Typical command line calls:

SmugMugMDDumper.exe -apikey:""xQDzWwLp2I1GUGli88g999VrQWN4Xz56"" -email:""youremail"" -password:""nimcompoop"" -output:""c:\test\smugdata.xml""
SmugMugMDDumper.exe -output:""d:\mystuff\smuggy.xml""
SmugMugMDDumper.exe -password:""newpassword"" -output:""c:\temp\out.xml""
SmugMugMDDumper.exe -help

";
Console.Write(__helpMsg);
return;
}

string __apiKey;
if (comline["apikey"] != null) __apiKey = comline["apikey"];
else __apiKey = apiKey;

string __emailAddress;
if (comline["email"] != null) __emailAddress = comline["email"];
else __emailAddress = emailAddress;

string __passWord;
if (comline["password"] != null) __passWord = comline["password"];
else __passWord = passWord;

string __outputFile;
if (comline["output"] != null) __outputFile = comline["output"];
else __outputFile = outFile;

// start output file
smugmd.WriteToFile(xmlHeader + "<SmugMugData>", __outputFile);

// open SmugMusg session - uses https
string __sessionID = smugmd.StartSMSession(__apiKey, __emailAddress, __passWord);

// collect all galleries
ds = smugmd.GetGalleries(__sessionID, __apiKey, __outputFile);
DataTable myTable = ds.Tables[0];
DataRow myRow;

// image metadata for each gallery
smugmd.AppendToFile("<GalleryImages>", __outputFile);
int rowcnt = myTable.Rows.Count;
string rowstr = "/" + rowcnt.ToString() + "]: ";
for (int i = 0; i < rowcnt; i++)
{
myRow = myTable.Rows[i];
Console.WriteLine("gallery [" + (i + 1).ToString() + rowstr + (string)myRow["Title"]);
doc = smugmd.GetGalleryImages(__sessionID, __apiKey, (int)myRow["id"], __outputFile);
}
smugmd.AppendToFile("</GalleryImages>", __outputFile);

// complete output file - end SmugMug session
smugmd.AppendToFile("</SmugMugData>", __outputFile);
smugmd.EndSMSession(__sessionID, __apiKey);

Console.WriteLine("[Complete] output file: " + __outputFile);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("[Fail] SmugMug Metadata Dumper Failure - error message: " + ex.Message);
}
}
}
}