Optimizing the whole media library

[swissspidy]

Like other plugins this plugin could offer a separate page to allow optimizing the whole media library.

Loop through all media items client-side, skip the ones that are already optimized, and then optimize images and videos

Implementation-wise it could be relatively simple:

• Paginate through all attachments via REST API
• For every page, add every attachment to the upload queue, which handles all the optimizations
  • Optimize existing attachment files without creating a new attachment
  • That means URLs must not change, otherwise existing content will break
  • For this, a new REST API endpoint is needed
• Once the queue is clear again, advance to the next page

Caveats:

• To be useful, this needs to override existing files, without WP trying to add suffixes. That also means not converting file types, just compressing the existing one.
• Probably no approval step, as that wouldn't scale

[swissspidy]

Some additional notes based on an earlier conversation with @westonruter:

Service worker might be tricky, see https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/security/service-worker-security-faq.md#do-service-workers-live-forever

"Chrome also detects long-running workers and terminates them. It does this if an event takes more than 5 minutes to settle, or if the worker is busy running synchronous JavaScript and does not respond to a ping within 30 seconds."

Periodic background sync API likely not suitable either.

It's only available if you installed the PWA to the homescreen and if the site engagement score is high enough

Background fetch API sounds interesting, but more aimed towards downloads

[swissspidy]

Maybe could do a POC with Workbox / the PWA plugin. See https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/pwa-wp/wiki/Service-Worker