How to get extended MacOS attributes of a file using python?

Question

I'm interested in getting more information from a file using python.

I know that using os.stat (such as below) returns information on the file, but I'd like to get other attributes from the file such as 'Where from?'

os.stat(filename)

posix.stat_result(st_mode=33184, st_ino=131691855, st_dev=16777220L, st_nlink=1, st_uid=501, st_gid=20, st_size=174241, st_atime=1445046864, st_mtime=1445045836, st_ctime=1445045836)

However, these aren't the attributes I'm interested. I'm interested in getting all of the below attributes (in particular 'Where from')

How can I get the 'Where from' field?

I've tried using os.access, but that doesn't return what I want, and have been searching the documentation on os, so I'm not sure what else I can try.

Answer 1

My example:

xattr -lp com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms ~/Projects/apimon/apimon/check/tests/resources/brus-\>lux\ dec\ 28.pdf 
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 A2 01 02 5F 10 54 68 74  |bplist00..._.Tht|
00000010  74 70 73 3A 2F 2F 62 65 2D 69 6E 74 65 72 6E 65  |tps://be-interne|
00000020  74 2E 62 65 6E 65 2D 73 79 73 74 65 6D 2E 63 6F  |t.bene-system.co|
00000030  6D 2F 2F 68 70 2F 70 64 66 73 65 72 76 69 63 65  |m//hp/pdfservice|
00000040  3F 70 64 66 3D 4B 4C 57 56 57 4C 47 31 34 34 35  |?pdf=KLWVWLG1445|
00000050  30 31 33 33 39 30 32 33 36 42 53 31 36 39 32 30  |013390236BS1690|
00000060  31 35 50 08 0B 62 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 00 00  |15P..b..........|
00000070  00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000080  00 00 00 00 00 63                                |.....c|
00000086

looks like there is a package called xattr doesnt look bad.. (you need to pip install xattr it)

In [6]: import xattr
In [7]: x = xattr.xattr('/Users/buzzi/Projects/apimon/apimon/check/tests/resources/brus->lux dec 28.pdf')

In [8]: x.items()
Out[8]: 
[(u'com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms',
  'bplist00\xa2\x01\x02_\x10Thttps://be-internet.bene-system.com//hp/pdfservice?pdf=KLWVWLG1445013390236BS169201P\x08\x0bb\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x03\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00c'),
 (u'com.apple.quarantine',
  '0001;562127d1;Google Chrome;BF24C900-46D5-4F95-9B7B-C36AA6B0ACC7')]

More research lead me to biplist module. (you need to pip install biplist it)

>>> import biplist
>>> biplist.readPlistFromString(x.get('com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms'))
['https://be-internet.bene-system.com//hp/pdfservice?pdf=KLWVWLG1445013390236BS169201',
 '']

DONE!