Reading images exif data with PHP

In most photos from digital cameras besides the actual image, there’s a little ”information block” call EXIF data. If you have the correct PHP extension installed on your server – the one called ”exif” – it’s pretty easy to read the EXIF data and display them, as you like.

1) Check if the extension is available?

$load_extensions = get_loaded_extensions();
if (!in_array(exif, $load_extensions )) {
echo "Exif is NOT available";
} else {
echo "Exif extension is available.";
};

other way is simple:

if (function_exists('exif_read_data')) { ... }

2) If you have the extension available, reading the data is a simple matter:

function get__exif__information($file) {
$exif = exif_read_data($file, 0, true);
return $exif;
}

get__exif__information ( path_to_image)