Accessing JPEG EXIF rotation data in JavaScript on the client side

Question

If you only want the orientation tag and nothing else and don't like to include another huge javascript library I wrote a little code that extracts the orientation tag as fast as possible (It uses DataView and readAsArrayBuffer which are available in IE10+, but you can write your own data reader for older browsers):

function getOrientation(file, callback) {
    var reader = new FileReader();
    reader.onload = function(e) {

        var view = new DataView(e.target.result);
        if (view.getUint16(0, false) != 0xFFD8)
        {
            return callback(-2);
        }
        var length = view.byteLength, offset = 2;
        while (offset < length) 
        {
            if (view.getUint16(offset+2, false) <= 8) return callback(-1);
            var marker = view.getUint16(offset, false);
            offset += 2;
            if (marker == 0xFFE1) 
            {
                if (view.getUint32(offset += 2, false) != 0x45786966) 
                {
                    return callback(-1);
                }

                var little = view.getUint16(offset += 6, false) == 0x4949;
                offset += view.getUint32(offset + 4, little);
                var tags = view.getUint16(offset, little);
                offset += 2;
                for (var i = 0; i < tags; i++)
                {
                    if (view.getUint16(offset + (i * 12), little) == 0x0112)
                    {
                        return callback(view.getUint16(offset + (i * 12) + 8, little));
                    }
                }
            }
            else if ((marker & 0xFF00) != 0xFF00)
            {
                break;
            }
            else
            { 
                offset += view.getUint16(offset, false);
            }
        }
        return callback(-1);
    };
    reader.readAsArrayBuffer(file);
}

// usage:
var input = document.getElementById('input');
input.onchange = function(e) {
    getOrientation(input.files[0], function(orientation) {
        alert('orientation: ' + orientation);
    });
}

<input id='input' type='file' />

values:

-2: not jpeg
-1: not defined

For those using Typescript, you can use the following code:

export const getOrientation = (file: File, callback: Function) => {
  var reader = new FileReader();

  reader.onload = (event: ProgressEvent) => {

    if (! event.target) {
      return;
    }

    const file = event.target as FileReader;
    const view = new DataView(file.result as ArrayBuffer);

    if (view.getUint16(0, false) != 0xFFD8) {
        return callback(-2);
    }

    const length = view.byteLength
    let offset = 2;

    while (offset < length)
    {
        if (view.getUint16(offset+2, false) <= 8) return callback(-1);
        let marker = view.getUint16(offset, false);
        offset += 2;

        if (marker == 0xFFE1) {
          if (view.getUint32(offset += 2, false) != 0x45786966) {
            return callback(-1);
          }

          let little = view.getUint16(offset += 6, false) == 0x4949;
          offset += view.getUint32(offset + 4, little);
          let tags = view.getUint16(offset, little);
          offset += 2;
          for (let i = 0; i < tags; i++) {
            if (view.getUint16(offset + (i * 12), little) == 0x0112) {
              return callback(view.getUint16(offset + (i * 12) + 8, little));
            }
          }
        } else if ((marker & 0xFF00) != 0xFF00) {
            break;
        }
        else {
            offset += view.getUint16(offset, false);
        }
    }
    return callback(-1);
  };

  reader.readAsArrayBuffer(file);
}

You can use the exif-js library in combination with the HTML5 File API: http://jsfiddle.net/xQnMd/1/.

$("input").change(function() {
    var file = this.files[0];  // file
        fr   = new FileReader; // to read file contents

    fr.onloadend = function() {
        // get EXIF data
        var exif = EXIF.readFromBinaryFile(new BinaryFile(this.result));

        // alert a value
        alert(exif.Make);
    };

    fr.readAsBinaryString(file); // read the file
});

Firefox 26 supports image-orientation: from-image: images are displayed portrait or landscape, depending on EXIF data. (See sethfowler.org/blog/2013/09/13/new-in-firefox-26-css-image-orientation.)

There is also a bug to implement this in Chrome.

Beware that this property is only supported by Firefox and is likely to be deprecated.

https://github.com/blueimp/JavaScript-Load-Image is a modern javascript library that can not only extract the exif orientation flag - it can also correctly mirror/rotate JPEG images on the client side.

I just solved the same problem with this library: JS Client-Side Exif Orientation: Rotate and Mirror JPEG Images