Retain query string in the final file output path

[Powell-v2]

Feature Proposal

Hi there,

Currently any query string gets stripped away from the output path: path/to/image.webp?q=/width_50/quality_50 becomes path/to/image.webp. As far as I can tell, there is neither a placeholder representing query string (e.g. [name].[hash:8].[ext][querystring]), nor an option allowing to retain it.

Seems like a straightforward change as resource's query string is available under this.resourceQuery property, however I'm not really sure why it's removed in the first place and how it might affect existing projects.

I'll be happy to submit a PR - just need to gain the context first.

Thank you!

Feature Use Case

Major use case for this feature is custom processing applied to images post-deploy by Image CDN services. It's typically done via query strings.

[alexander-akait]

It can't be fixed on file-loader side, already discussed many times, sorry, it is the internal mechanism. It is used for arguments for other loaders. You can write a custom plugin/loader if you need to save some of them or add new

[anikethsaha]

i dont see either any use case of this feature as nonscriptable files cant process those query string.

example: how a .png will process the queries ?

SO its not suitable and not workable

[alexander-akait]

Server side handling, but I recommend setup webpack to ignore them, because they are not real static assets

[kamermans]

The primary use case is Image CDNs. Influencers like Google are recommending people use Image CDNs. These CDNs allow the developer to adjust the image on-the-fly using URL parameters. Every file that file-loader loads will ultimately be served via HTTP, and usually by a server that will gladly ignore a URL parameter for a static file. Webpack and file-loader are ubiquitous in the front end web development space, and it makes total sense to encourage the widest adoption of best-practices by enabling this in the most widely-used components.

Previously submitted issues/PRs that address this problem were closed, and quite possibly for a good reason. It's easy to see how this feature may be requested because someone is simply doing something incorrectly, or using an anti-pattern we all want to avoid.

I see this issue as different because the landscape has changed. None of us (web developers) want to deal with optimizing our assets, which is why projects like webpack, file-loader, image-loader, etc, exist to begin with. Today there are more than a dozen Image CDNs that are happy to optimize images on-the-fly, but are made more powerful if the developer can pass some hints to the server about how it should handle the image. For example, perhaps you want a higher-quality image on your homepage hero element and higher compression on the other images to maintain good performance.

It seems the arguments boil down to two points:

1. It can't be fixed on file-loader side / it's not workable
   It can be made possible for users to do in only one line. If you simply pass resourceQuery to the publicPath function here, users will be able to alter their asset's public paths, appending the query string if they so choose.
2. Its not suitable / I don't see any use case of this feature as nonscriptable files can't process those query string
   Hopefully my explanation above has made this clear.

[alexander-akait]

Do you know what some proxies in your path into internet (from a client to a server) still not respect query parameters for cache invalidation and still cache a result, you can try it manually and found a lot of them? So most of CDN use urls like https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.4.1.slim.js where you have a version as part of pathname. Just for a information.

Using query string for static assets doesn't make sense, it is static assets. Do you want to process dynamic server requests as static? Doesn’t it seem strange to you? You specify examples when developers use absolute urls in source code on CDN, yes, we don't touch absolute urls. I’m even interested to see your configuration. And I’m ready to show you how to configure everything correctly so as not to encounter similar problems.

Honestly, this has already been discussed many times and showed the anti-patterns that you talk about above and how to fix them.

The resourceQuery property for internal purpose. Yes you can implement own loader and implement any logic.

file-loader and url-loader will be deprecated for webpack@5 in favor asset type mode.

Feel free to leave feedback.

[kamermans]

First, you are super-responsive and I definitely appreciate that! I have helped maintain many open source projects and it's really hard to keep on top of the non-stop requests, so thank you!

Do you know what some proxies in your path into internet (from a client to a server) still not respect query parameters for cache invalidation

Yes, great point. This is why some Image CDNs like ImageEngine (full disclosure, I a co-founder) allow directives in the URL instead of just the query string. This problem is much less common these days (compared to when I started working on internet architecture 25 years ago) though, and usually it's not proxies between you and the remote site, but rather it's the remote site itself. In my use case, the remote site is an Image CDN and they have full control over the incoming request.

Using query string for static assets doesn't make sense, it is static assets. Do you want to process dynamic server requests as static? Doesn’t it seem strange to you?

No, it doesn't seem strange to me at all. Client/server content-negotiation is already serving your static assets dynamically. When you put a JPEG on your site and use a CDN, it's probably being served as a WEBP to Chrome clients whether you like it or not. When you pack your JS bundle and throw it up on a server, it's probably being served as gzip or brotli. When a powerful Image CDN serves your images, it may reduce the resolution or quality, remove EXIF data and superfluous color profiles and serve it in a different format. From the point of the user, this asset is still static insofar as every user "sees the same thing", but under the hood, companies like mine are "trimming the fat" off your assets.

Honestly, this has already been discussed many times and showed the anti-patterns that you talk about above and how to fix them.

It's totally possible that I'm trying to fix this in the wrong place. I'm not a frontend/webpack guru, so I admit that I may be missing an obvious route to solving this problem, and I really appreciate your offer to suggest how I might fix this problem.

Also, thanks for the note about webpack 5 moving to the asset type, that was totally off my radar!

An example of my configuration/scenario is this: my customers use frameworks like Vue and React and have written their sites in idiomatic ways, like using resource-loaders. Here's an example in Vue:

<img src="@/assets/images/foo-diagram.png"/>

This person would like to ensure that this image is resized automatically as negotiated by the client and server, but should not exceed 640px wide, and I would like to tell them to do this:

<img src="@/assets/images/foo-diagram.png?imgeng=w_auto,640"/>

This doesn't work, however, because the query string is dropped.
The alternatives are all less-desirable:

1. Tell the customer to move all their images to a public, static folder and change all the references to all their images in all places to point to the new location (labor-intensive, not idiomatic).
2. Create plugins for every framework (Vue, React, etc) that introduces a new component besides <img> that could be used instead (labor-intensive, probably misses all the default loaders for things like versioning, etc)
3. Tell my customers that they are "doing it wrong" and that they should create several versions of each image at different resolutions and qualities so they don't need the parameters (I think this might be the quintessence of an anti-pattern).
4. Create a new webpack plugin like file-loader that does everything exactly the same as file-loader but doesn't discard the query string, or appends it in the publicPath processing (perhaps this is the best alternative, I am looking into it; it will be annoying to have to track file-loader so perfectly, and we'll need to find a way to copy the main file-loader config that the user is already using).
5. Create a new webpack plugin that gracefully fixes the problem some way - I'm open to suggestions and happy to drop a donation your way to steer me in the right direction :)

[alexander-akait]

@kamermans Ok, let’s think about how we can solve this here, and then transfer this solution to webpack@5 asset type to avoid problem in future.

Can you create a minimal easy example? Because having a code and an approximate structure on hand will make it easier for us to communicate.

You provide example:

<img src="@/assets/images/foo-diagram.png?imgeng=w_auto,640"/>

Should be the imgeng argument was static? Or it is set up using JS? Or it is do developer on when writing code?

[kamermans]

Thanks for the response!

Should be the imgeng argument was static? Or it is set up using JS? Or it is do developer on when writing code?

Yes, the query string should be static, otherwise the browser's speculative preloader will load the original version and the one modified by JS.

Browsers get around this problem via responsive images and client hints.

I've put together a minimal example within a typical framework by creating a "hello world" Vue CLI project and editing the template so there is one <img> resource (using srcset, which is working fine in webpack) and one CSS background-image (with two variants via media queries). Both images are being included via file-loader.

Here is the example repo, with the <img> tag highlighted: https://github.com/kamermans/webpack-image-cdn-example/blob/master/src/App.vue#L13-L16

I have included examples in the "traditional" method (creating multiple image variants for each breakpoint) and the "new" method (using an Image CDN to deal with the variants).

Here is the live version of the page, which is automatically built by netlify:
https://distracted-ritchie-1f0417.netlify.com/

I am using a CDN to serve the assets by setting the publicPath in vue.config.js, which gets passed to webpack.

The generated code in live site will be a little strange - all the images in the srcset are the same, and so are both of the background images. This is because the query string is stripped, otherwise they would be real, different variants.

This might not be what you had in mind for a "minimal example", so please let me know if you want me to put something together with just webpack or something. I thought it might be helpful to see it in the context of a running minimal application.

[alexander-akait]

I think I understand your idea. I need to discussion with other developers how best to solve this. I’ll try to get it today, feel free to ping me 👍