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Hello it's my first post.

I started doing some coding in Python on OS X today.

I've noticed that OS X has such thing as a date added which is the time the file was put into specified folder.

I'm trying to get that date as a timestamp, however none of types work.

I've tried all three I know:

st = os.path.getctime('Untitled.gif') st1 = os.path.getatime('Untitled.gif') st2 = os.path.getmtime('Untitled.gif')

But none of them shows what I need. Maybe there's a way to get all metadata from file somehow and just pick the info I need.

Thanks

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You can get this information with the mdls command, called via subprocess:

import subprocess st = subprocess.check_output(["mdls", "-name", "kMDItemDateAdded", "-raw", "Untitled.gif"])
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It seems st_ctime (the time of most recent metadata change on Unix) is the closest attribute to "Date Added" on Mac that the class os.stat_result offers—which at a time resembles "Date Added" for some files yet at another time doesn't for the same files!

import os import datetime st_result = os.stat('Untitled.gif') ts = st_result.st_ctime dt = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(ts) print(dt)

Sample output:

2021-09-08 15:10:22.602768

If I wish to interpret st_ctime as "Date Added," I should manually check if it correctly holds "Date Added" for all the intended files—e.g. sorting the files in a terminal by ctime with ls -ltc | head -n NUMBER_OF_LINES_I_WANT_TO_SEE; then corresponding their order with the order I see on a finder sorted by "Date Added."

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Try os.stat('Untitled.gif').st_birthtime. More info on os.stat can be found here.

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Birthtime is file creation date, not the date added to the directory.

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