[bash] How to check if a Docker image with a specific tag exist locally?

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

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*')

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

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.

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"

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

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/

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.

You can use like the following:

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

Or:

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

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.

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