django-webp

Speeds up static file load times by generating a webp image to load to a webpage instead of a jpg, gif or png

Usage

Load the webp module in your template and use the webp templatetag to point to the image you want to convert.

{% load webp %}

{# Use webp as you would use static templatetag #}
<img src="{% webp 'path/to/your/image.png' %}" alt="image" />
<!--
If the browser has support, generates:
<img src="/static/WEBP_CACHE/path/to/your/image.webp" alt="image" />

else, generates:
<img src="/static/path/to/your/image.png" alt="image" />
-->

Installation

First, if you are using a version of Pillow <= 9.3.0, you must install webp support since earlier versions of Pillow do not have webp support built-in. In ubuntu, you can install via apt-get:

apt-get install libwebp-dev

Please, check the official guide for the other systems.

Then, install django-webp.

pip install django-webp

add it to INSTALLED_APPS configuration

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'django_webp',
    '...',
)

edit your installation of Whitenoise to use our slightly modded version of it

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django_webp.middleware.ModdedWhiteNoiseMiddleware',
    '...',
]

add the django_webp context processor

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        '...'
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                '...',
                'django_webp.context_processors.webp',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Settings

The following Django-level settings affect the behavior of the library

• WEBP_CHECK_URLS

  When set to True, urls that link to externally stored images (i.e. images hosted by another site) are checked to confirm if they are valid image links. Ideally, this should temporarily be set to True whenever the WEBP_CACHE has been cleaned or if there has been substantial changes to your project's template files. This defaults to False.

Possible Issues

• django-webp uses Pillow to convert the images. If you’ve installed the libwebp-dev after already installed Pillow, it’s necessary to uninstall and install it back because it needs to be compiled with it.
• This package was built specifically for production environments that use Whitenoise for serving static files so there currently isn't support for serving files via dedicated servers or through cloud services

Cleaning the cache

You can clean the cache running:

python manage.py clean_webp_images