How to check if a Docker image with a specific tag exists locally?

Question

I'd like to find out if a Docker image with a specific tag exists locally. I'm fine by using a bash script if the Docker client cannot do this natively.

Just to provide some hints for a potential bash script the result of running the docker images command returns the following:

REPOSITORY                               TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             VIRTUAL SIZE
rabbitmq                                 latest              e8e654c05c91        5 weeks ago         143.5 MB
busybox                                  latest              8c2e06607696        6 weeks ago         2.433 MB
rabbitmq                                 3.4.4               a4fbaad9f996        11 weeks ago        131.5 MB

Girdler

Answer 1

I usually test the result of docker images -q (as in this script):

if [ -z "$(docker images -q myimage:mytag 2> /dev/null)" ]; then
  # do something
fi

On Powershell (comment from Garret Wilson):

if (!(docker images -q myimage:mytag 2> $null)) { 
  # do something
}

But since docker images only takes REPOSITORY as parameter, you would need to grep on tag, without using -q.

docker images takes tags now (docker 1.8+) [REPOSITORY[:TAG]]

The other approach mentioned below is to use docker inspect.
But with docker 17+, the syntax for images is: docker image inspect (on an non-existent image, the exit status will be non-0)

As noted by iTayb in the comments:

• The docker images -q method can get really slow on a machine with lots of images. It takes 44s to run on a 6,500 images machine.
• The docker image inspect returns immediately.

---

As noted in the comments by Henry Blyth:

If you use docker image inspect my_image:my_tag, and you want to ignore the output, you can add --format="ignore me" and it will print that literally.

You can also redirect stdout by adding >/dev/null but, if you can't do that in your script, then the format option works cleanly.

Granese

Answer 2

Try docker inspect, for example:

$ docker inspect --type=image treeder/hello.rb:nada
Error: No such image: treeder/hello.rb:nada
[]

But now with an image that exists, you'll get a bunch of information, eg:

$ docker inspect --type=image treeder/hello.rb:latest
[
{
    "Id": "85c5116a2835521de2c52f10ab5dda0ff002a4a12aa476c141aace9bc67f43ad",
    "Parent": "ecf63f5eb5e89e5974875da3998d72abc0d3d0e4ae2354887fffba037b356ad5",
    "Comment": "",
    "Created": "2015-09-23T22:06:38.86684783Z",
    ...
}
]

And it's in a nice json format.

Shanika

This is the most scriptable answer. – Aaron

Indeed, images and ps commands always exit with 0, with inspect it's as simple as: docker inspect "${image_id}:${image_tag}" > /dev/null 2>&1 || echo "does not exist!" – Pisarik

docker inspect is great because of the non-zero return code when no image exists. – Rutilant

This is also much faster then docker images -q. – Butane

If you want to suppress the output in your script: if ! docker inspect <CONDITION> >> temp_docker-inspect.txt; then ... – Manslayer

This should be the accepted answer. – Slavic

Answer 3

tldr:

docker image inspect myimage:mytag

By way of demonstration...

success, found image:

$ docker image pull busybox:latest
latest: Pulling from library/busybox
Digest: sha256:32f093055929dbc23dec4d03e09dfe971f5973a9ca5cf059cbfb644c206aa83f
Status: Image is up to date for busybox:latest

$ docker image inspect busybox:latest >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo yes || echo no
yes

failure, missing image:

$ docker image rm busybox:latest
Untagged: busybox:latest
Untagged: busybox@sha256:32f093055929dbc23dec4d03e09dfe971f5973a9ca5cf059cbfb644c206aa83f

$ docker image inspect busybox:latest >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo yes || echo no
no

Reference:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/image_inspect/

Embracery

this was straightforward, quick and compatible up to the future. I'll stick to this solution. – Shutter

To be more specific, specify --type image for images, or --type container for existing containers – Cither

@smac89, I'm not familiar with that option. ``` $ docker --version Docker version 20.10.6, build 370c289 $ docker image inspect --help Usage: docker image inspect [OPTIONS] IMAGE [IMAGE...] Display detailed information on one or more images Options: -f, --format string Format the output using the given Go template ``` – Embracery

Oh whoops, I was doing docker inspect, not docker image inspect. – Cither

Answer 4

You can use like the following:

[ -n "$(docker images -q someimage:sometag)" ] || echo "does not exist"

Or:

[ -z "$(docker images -q someimage:sometag)" ] || echo "already exists"

Cupule

Does not work, on macOS at least, the return value is always 0. – Messner

The code is correct and works on linux. Only thing I'd add is quotes to the subshell command – Llamas

@GaborCsardi This one works on MacOS: [[ -z "$(docker images -q someimage:sometag)" ]] || echo "exists" as well as [[ -n "$(docker images -q someimage:sometag)" ]] || echo "doesn't exist". Edited answer. Should work fine now. Gabor, can you please confirm? – Shiflett

Answer 5

With the help of Vonc's answer above I created the following bash script named check.sh:

#!/bin/bash
image_and_tag="$1"
image_and_tag_array=(${image_and_tag//:/ })
if [[ "$(docker images ${image_and_tag_array[0]} | grep ${image_and_tag_array[1]} 2> /dev/null)" != "" ]]; then
  echo "exists"
else
  echo "doesn't exist"
fi

Using it for an existing image and tag will print exists, for example:

./check.sh rabbitmq:3.4.4

Using it for a non-existing image and tag will print doesn't exist, for example:

./check.sh rabbitmq:3.4.3

Girdler

Answer 6

Using test

if test ! -z "$(docker images -q <name:tag>)"; then
  echo "Exist"
fi

or in one line

test ! -z "$(docker images -q <name:tag>)" &&  echo exist

Daytoday

Answer 7

In case you are trying to search for a docker image from a docker registry, I guess the easiest way to check if a docker image is present is by using the Docker V2 REST API Tags list service

Example:-

curl $CURLOPTS -H "Authorization: Bearer $token" "https://hub.docker.com:4443/v2/your-repo-name/tags/list"

if the above result returns 200Ok with a list of image tags, then we know that image exists

{"name":"your-repo-name","tags":["1.0.0.1533677221","1.0.0.1533740305","1.0.0.1535659921","1.0.0.1535665433","latest"]}

else if you see something like

{"errors":[{"code":"NAME_UNKNOWN","message":"repository name not known to registry","detail":{"name":"your-repo-name"}}]} 

then you know for sure that image doesn't exist.

Eroto

Answer 8

In bash script I do this to check if image exists by tag :

IMAGE_NAME="mysql:5.6"

if docker image ls -a "$IMAGE_NAME" | grep -Fq "$IMAGE_NAME" 1>/dev/null; then
echo "could found image $IMAGE_NAME..."
fi

Example script above checks if mysql image with 5.6 tag exists. If you want just check if any mysql image exists without specific version then just pass repository name without tag as this :

IMAGE_NAME="mysql"

Mesenchyme

Answer 9

Inspired by @rubicks's response above.

To check if the image exists already

image_name_tag="alpine:3.13.3"

docker image inspect ${image_name_tag} > /dev/null
echo $?

Pull if image does not exist

docker image inspect ${image_name_tag} > /dev/null || docker  pull ${image_name_tag}

Demo execution

# image_name_tag="alpine:3.13.3"
# 
# docker image inspect ${image_name_tag} > /dev/null
echo $?
Error: No such image: alpine:3.13.3
# echo $?
1
# docker image inspect ${image_name_tag} > /dev/null || docker  pull ${image_name_tag}
Error: No such image: alpine:3.13.3
3.13.3: Pulling from library/alpine
9aae54b2144e: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:826f70e0ac33e99a72cf20fb0571245a8fee52d68cb26d8bc58e53bfa65dcdfa
Status: Downloaded newer image for alpine:3.13.3
docker.io/library/alpine:3.13.3
# docker image inspect ${image_name_tag} > /dev/null || docker  pull ${image_name_tag}
$ 

Derogative

Answer 10

Just a bit from me to very good readers:

Build

#!/bin/bash -e
docker build -t smpp-gateway smpp
(if  [ $(docker ps -a | grep smpp-gateway | cut -d " " -f1) ]; then \
  echo $(docker rm -f smpp-gateway); \
else \
  echo OK; \
fi;);
docker run --restart always -d --network="host" --name smpp-gateway smpp-gateway:latest

Watch

docker logs --tail 50 --follow --timestamps smpp-gateway

Run

sudo docker exec -it \
$(sudo docker ps | grep "smpp-gateway:latest" | cut -d " " -f1) \
/bin/bash

Overmatch

Answer 11

for specific tag name

$ docker images  --filter reference='<REPOSITORY>:TAG'

for "like clause" tagname:my_image_tag --> start my_ima*

$ docker images  --filter reference='<REPOSITORY>:my_ima*'

if you want to someting "the image" for example delete all images tag started "my_ima" try this

docker rmi -f $(docker images -q  --filter reference='myreponame:my_ima*')

Baileybailie

If the image doesn't exist, the exit code is still 0. As such, it's not relevant to be used in a script, only for humans (who can use the more universal docker images | grep <expression> too) – Maneater

Answer 12

I think this functionality should be implemented inside the docker build command (using a flag?), so that it avoids a lot of code duplication.

I used the same condition as the accepted answer inside a wrapper function called docker_build so that it does the necessary checks before calling the original docker build command.

# Usage: docker_build <...> (instead of docker build)

docker_build()
{
    local arguments=("$@")
    local index
    for (( index=0; index<$#; index++ )); do
        case ${arguments[index]} in
            --tag)
                local tag=${arguments[index+1]}
                if [[ ! -z $(docker images -q "${tag}" 2> /dev/null) ]]; then
                    echo "Image ${tag} already exists."
                    return
                fi
                ;;
        esac
    done
    command docker build "$@"
}

Disclaimer: This is not ready for production because it works only with space-separated arguments in long format i.e --tag hello-world:latest. Also, this just modifies the docker build command only, all other commands remain same. If anyone has improvements, please let me know.

I felt like sharing this snippet because the idea of wrapping-standard-commands-in-bash-functions, to avoid code repetition, seemed more elegant and scalable than writing wrapper statements.

Washbowl

Answer 13

I like this because it is concise and has the proper semantics. If the image exists it is true what could be easier?

if [ $(docker image ls ${build_env} --format="true") ] ; 
then
 echo "does exist"
fi

Lombroso