Optimize website images automatically

You might have read our previous post on best tools for optimizing images, and now wondering how to automate those optimizations.

An instinctive solution is a cron job that runs optimization utilities against website files which have been added recently, e.g.:

0 1 * * 1 find /path/to/dir/ -name '*.jpg' -type f -mtime -7 -exec jpegoptim -q -s -p --all-progressive -m 65 {} \; >/dev/null 2>&1

Why this approach is wrong?

• Files may be uploaded with modification time set, which is not going to be picked up by the cron
• Missed cron job might not pick up on new files
• There is no “memory” of the optimization – batch processing of the directory is impossible / will result in extreme quality degradation (think of reducing quality to 65% twice, three times, etc.)

So what is the proper solution? Meet xattr and inotify Linux kernel subsystems:

• xattr will allow to efficiently store optimization level for an image file, allowing further runs to check it and prevemt re-optimizing things over and over
• inotify will allow for real time optimization, as soon as the files have been added

Leveraging xattr

#!/bin/bash
# expects: dir (or current)
# for setfattr command
yum -y install attr

find $1 -iname '*.jpg' -exec sh -c '
  for i do
    getfattr -n user.q --only-values "$i" 2>&1 | grep "No such attribute" >/dev/null && jpegoptim --strip-all --force --all-progressive "$i" && setfattr -n user.q -v 100 "$i"
  done' sh {} +

find . -type f -iname '*.png' -exec \
  getfattr -n user.optimized --only-values {} 2>&1 | \
  grep "No such attribute" >/dev/null && \
  setfattr -n user.optimized -v 1 {} \
  && zopflipng -m -y {} {} \;

Leveraging inotify

This script will help with automatic images performance optimization.

#!/bin/bash

# The backup directory to create where the image file is found before compressing it.
BACKUPDIR=backup

if [ "$#" -eq 1 ]; then
    WATCH_DIR=$1
else
    WATCH_DIR=`pwd`
    echo -e "\e[1;31mNo watch directory provided as script parameter. Using current working directory as watch dir \e[0m "
fi

inotifywait -o /var/log/compressImage.log -dr --timefmt '%d/%m/%y %H:%M' --format '%T %w %f' \
-e close_write $WATCH_DIR | while read date time DIR FILE; do
       NEW_FILE=${DIR}${FILE}
       echo "${NEW_FILE} found"
       # Use appropriate if clause if you want to optimize other formats, beware output is always png
       #if [[ ${FILE} = *.png ]] || [[ ${FILE} = *.gif ]] || [[ ${FILE} = *.bmp ]]  || [[ ${FILE} = *.tiff ]]; then 
       if [[ ${FILE} = *.png ]]; then   
       echo "processing $NEW_FILE"
       # As a result of optipng optimization below, a new close_write gets fired for the same file. 
       #But no loop as optipng won't be able to optimze it any further on second run and we will be ok.
           optipng -o2 -keep -preserve -quiet ${NEW_FILE}
       BACKUPDIR_PATH=${DIR}/backup
           mkdir -p ${BACKUPDIR_PATH}
       mv ${DIR}${FILE}.bak ${BACKUPDIR_PATH}/${FILE}
       elif [[ ${FILE} = *.jpg ]] || [[ ${FILE} = *.jpeg ]]; then  
          echo "processing $NEW_FILE"  
          # As a result of optipng optimization below, a new close_write gets fired for the same file. 
      #But no loop as optipng won't be able to optimze it any further on second run and we will be ok.
          jpegoptim -p -t --strip-all --strip-icc --strip-iptc $NEW_FILE
       fi       
done