Magento 1.9 duplicate images being saved

Question

I am updating product's attributes and images through program. The problem is that, it is adding new images everytime and appending _1 or _1_1 to the file. Hence a lot of duplicate files in the drive.

I searched in the forum for the solution. They say not to save the product twice. You can see below code that I have a function downloadAndImportImage() that adds images and later on I save the product.

What am I missing ? Thanks in advance.

function downloadAndImportImage($image_url, $_product, $num, $sku){

    try{
        .
        .
        .

        if (file_exists($filepath_to_image)) {
            $_product->addImageToMediaGallery($filepath_to_image, array('image', 'small_image', 'thumbnail'), false, false);

        }
    }catch(Exception $e){
        echo $e->getMessage();
    }
}


function updateProduct(){
...
if($record[14]){
    if ($record[14] != $record[13]){
       downloadAndImportImage($record[14], $_product, 14, $record[0]);
   }
}
if($record[15]){
   if ($record[14] != $record[15]){
      downloadAndImportImage($record[15], $_product, 15, $record[0]);
 }
}

$_product->save();

}

Answer 1

You'd validate if current media values of product are the same as the ones you are trying to update. If same file exists Magento will append that _1 to filename to avoid overwriting files. This happens in lib/Varien/File/Uploader.php

static public function getNewFileName($destFile)
{
    $fileInfo = pathinfo($destFile);
    if (file_exists($destFile)) {
        $index = 1;
        $baseName = $fileInfo['filename'] . '.' . $fileInfo['extension'];
        while( file_exists($fileInfo['dirname'] . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $baseName) ) {
            $baseName = $fileInfo['filename']. '_' . $index . '.' . $fileInfo['extension'];
            $index ++;
        }
        $destFileName = $baseName;
    } else {
        return $fileInfo['basename'];
    }

    return $destFileName;
}

You can try changing that logic & use your custom method, rewriting _getNotDuplicatedFilename() method in Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Attribute_Backend_Media class, which calls above function

Another way would be running some clean process after your update, and delete unused images. You have some examples here

https://gist.github.com/aleron75/07ab2a950b2e3429a820

https://magento.stackexchange.com/a/214255/3566