How to check if a Docker image with a specific tag

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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

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

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)

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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"

Answer 6

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.