tiff_band_names: Read per-band names from a GeoTIFF

In vectra: Columnar Query Engine for Larger-than-RAM Data

Read per-band names from a GeoTIFF

Description

Returns the band names embedded in the file's GDAL_METADATA XML (TIFF tag 42112). GDAL writes per-band names as ⁠<Item name="DESCRIPTION" sample="N" role="description">...</Item>⁠ entries, where sample is the 0-based band index. Bands without a name in the XML are reported as NA. Files with no GDAL_METADATA tag at all return a length-nbands vector of NA_character_.

Usage

tiff_band_names(path)

Arguments

path	Path to a GeoTIFF file.

Details

This is a small, dependency-free scanner intended for the common case (terra::names(r) <- ... and similar). For arbitrary XML, parse the raw string from tiff_metadata() yourself.

Value

A character vector of length nbands. Element i is the name of band i (or NA_character_ if the file does not name it).

Examples

f <- tempfile(fileext = ".tif")
df <- data.frame(x = rep(1:2, 2), y = rep(1:2, each = 2),
                 band1 = as.double(1:4), band2 = as.double(5:8))
xml <- paste0(
  "<GDALMetadata>",
  "<Item name=\"DESCRIPTION\" sample=\"0\" role=\"description\">temperature</Item>",
  "<Item name=\"DESCRIPTION\" sample=\"1\" role=\"description\">humidity</Item>",
  "</GDALMetadata>")
write_tiff(df, f, metadata = xml)
tiff_band_names(f)
unlink(f)

vectra documentation built on May 8, 2026, 9:06 a.m.