Aoe_LazyCatalogImages Magento Module

This module (LCI) is meant to provide URLs for images that contain enough information to render the image at a later point in time. The current system pre-renders images and front-loads that overhead into the initial page render process. Additionally, if the image cache is flushed and a page is cached with the old image URLs, then the images will be broken. LCI changes all URLs generated by the catalog/image helper to contain the full set of parameters to build an image and signs the parameters with a SHA265 hash to prevent tampering by end-users.

The actual rendering of the images is handled via the /lci.php and /media/catalog/product/LCI/.htaccess combo. The .htaccess file will rewrite requests for non-existent files to be serviced by /lci.php. The entrypoint, lci.php, passes the full URL pathinfo to the image helper. The image helper attempts to extract a token from the pathinfo and checks if the token is valid and should be processed. At the early stage of token decoding a failure results in a 404 response. At later stages, after the token is decoded, a failure results in a redirect to a placeholder image.

License

OSL v3.0

Contributors

• Lee Saferite (AOE)
• Fabrizio Branca (AOE)
• Pull requests are welcome

Compatability

• Helper Rewrites
  • catalog/image
• Module Dependencies
  • Mage_Core
  • Mage_Catalog

TODO

• Add admin config flag to enable/disable LCI
• Add admin config flag to enable/disable local caching of the image under the LCI URL filename so Apache (or whatever) can directly serve the image on future requests
• Add admin config for cache age
• Add unit tests

Disclaimer

This module is experimental and not guaranteed to work.