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Tiemen

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Deleting ranges of docker images using filters

Purging ranges of stale Docker Images using filters

If the output of docker images spans too many lines and you want to tidy it up, but you think docker system prune is like using C4 to open a can of tuna, maybe take docker images's -f flag for a spin!

docker images -f utilises the filter option and it lets you specify some extra search options to select exactly the images you're interested in!

Filter Options

Currently Docker supports a list of filter options, but in this write-up we're only focussing on the before and since filters - go for a full overview of the available filter options to the Docker Docs on Filtering

-f since={image id}
The filter option since takes an image ID and selects all the images that are newer than the given image.

-f before={image id}
Much like since, this tag selects all the images that are older than the given image id.

And to select a whole range of Docker Images, simply stick 'em together!

Example

Enough talking; show me the money! So - imagine the output of docker images looks like the following:

REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
hippo-fe            latest              ec8ec381807d        55 minutes ago      455MB
hippo-backend_api   latest              88a08f954c9f        4 days ago          47.4MB
<none>              <none>              66ee4e399b4a        4 days ago          423MB
<none>              <none>              098006369e17        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              7010975558a2        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              75ecd4cee8ef        4 days ago          47.4MB
<none>              <none>              d3942b2482a2        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              88676747d621        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              eb522755627b        4 days ago          445MB
<none>              <none>              d62380cf625f        5 days ago          86.3MB
<none>              <none>              21bce955c85b        5 days ago          474MB
spacevim/spacevim   latest              a6b4bb27c4e9        2 weeks ago         1.36GB
<none>              <none>              abf507ccc201        2 weeks ago         106MB
<none>              <none>              79a409b99ca5        2 weeks ago         530MB
<none>              <none>              5fd5b5859b37        3 weeks ago         106MB
<none>              <none>              d93260d7abc3        3 weeks ago         530MB
node                10.16.3-alpine      b95baba1cfdb        3 weeks ago         76.4MB
<none>              <none>              2c62a47471d1        4 weeks ago         106MB
<none>              <none>              3de57027cc18        4 weeks ago         523MB
elixir              1.9.1-alpine        33a0cf122cf7        5 weeks ago         87.6MB
<none>              <none>              e5196ef97445        6 weeks ago         104MB
elixir              1.8.1-alpine        447a8dff23a8        5 months ago        91.1MB
alpine              3.9                 5cb3aa00f899        6 months ago        5.53MB

That's quite the list! Let's say we're no longer interested in the images below the image tagged as hippo-backend_api with image id 88a08f954c9f and the images above spacevim/spacevim with image id a6b4bb27c4e9, how would we go about that using the filters described above?

$ docker images -f before=88a08f954c9f

Would give us all the images that are created before the hippo-backend_api one. Next step would be to select all the Docker images up-to a given image in history:

$ docker images -f before=88a08f954c9f -f since=a6b4bb27c4e9

Gives us all the images in a given range:

<none>              <none>              66ee4e399b4a        4 days ago          423MB
<none>              <none>              098006369e17        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              7010975558a2        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              75ecd4cee8ef        4 days ago          47.4MB
<none>              <none>              d3942b2482a2        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              88676747d621        4 days ago          449MB
<none>              <none>              eb522755627b        4 days ago          445MB
<none>              <none>              d62380cf625f        5 days ago          86.3MB
<none>              <none>              21bce955c85b        5 days ago          474MB

As you can see we're now only given the images in the selected range!

Soo - all we have to do now is tag on the -q flag to solely get a list of image ID's and pipe it into xargs to use them as arguments in the docker rmi -f command...

$ docker images -f before=a6b4bb27c4e9 -f since=88a08f954c9f -q | xargs docker rmi -f

... and voila! If we then run the docker images command again, we'll see that the given range has been deleted:

REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
hippo-fe            latest              ec8ec381807d        2 hours ago         455MB
hippo-backend_api   latest              88a08f954c9f        4 days ago          47.4MB
spacevim/spacevim   latest              a6b4bb27c4e9        2 weeks ago         1.36GB
<none>              <none>              abf507ccc201        2 weeks ago         106MB
<none>              <none>              79a409b99ca5        2 weeks ago         530MB
<none>              <none>              5fd5b5859b37        3 weeks ago         106MB
<none>              <none>              d93260d7abc3        3 weeks ago         530MB
node                10.16.3-alpine      b95baba1cfdb        3 weeks ago         76.4MB
<none>              <none>              2c62a47471d1        4 weeks ago         106MB
<none>              <none>              3de57027cc18        4 weeks ago         523MB
elixir              1.9.1-alpine        33a0cf122cf7        5 weeks ago         87.6MB
<none>              <none>              e5196ef97445        6 weeks ago         104MB
elixir              1.8.1-alpine        447a8dff23a8        5 months ago        91.1MB
alpine              3.9                 5cb3aa00f899        6 months ago        5.53MB

🙌

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