IQDB is a reverse image search system. It lets you search a database of images to find images that are visually similar to a given image

this version of IQDB is forked from Danbooru, which is a fork from the original IQDB used by https://iqdb.org

this fork uses some changes from the e621 fork

this fork:

• changes a postId to be a std::string
• changes capitalization to lower case :>
• removes imageId and iqdbId (everything is refered to by postId now)
• adds GET /images/:post_id, which is copied from e621's IQDB

# build the docker image
docker build . -t $IMAGE_NAME

# run IQDB in Docker on port 5588. This will create a database file in the current directory called `iqdb.sqlite`.
docker run --rm -it -p 5588:5588 -v $PWD:/mnt $IMAGE_NAME http 0.0.0.0 5588 /mnt/iqdb.sqlite

# test that IQDB is running
curl -v http://localhost:5588/status

# add `test.jpg` to IQDB with ID 1234. the IDs are arbitrary strings (Honooru uses MD5 hashes)
curl -F [email protected] http://localhost:5588/images/1234

# find images visually similar to `test.jpg`.
curl -F [email protected] http://localhost:5588/query

IQDB is a simple HTTP server with a JSON API. it has commands for adding images, removing images, and searching for similar images. image hashes are stored on disk in an SQLite database

to add an image to the database, POST a file to /images/:post_id where :post_id is an string ID for the image. on Honooru, the IDs are MD5 hashes of the file, but really can be any string

curl -F [email protected] http://localhost:5588/images/1234

{
  "hash": "iqdb_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",
  "post_id":1234,
  "signature":{
    "avglf":[0.6492715250149176,0.05807835483220937,0.022854957762458],
    "sig":[[-3457,-1670,-1667,-1664,-771,-768,-655,-649,-642,-513,-512,-387,-385,-384,-281,-258,-256,-143,-134,-129,-128,-25,-15,-12,-6,2,8,29,157,643,645,648,770,897,899,1157,1793,1922,2048,2049],[-1667,-1537,-1158,-771,-649,-512,-387,-384,-262,-256,-134,-129,-6,-1,3,7,14,15,16,32,131,135,142,143,144,160,268,270,386,641,643,645,646,656,770,897,899,1411,1536,2947],[-2438,-1283,-1153,-777,-770,-769,-643,-269,-262,-257,-134,-6,3,7,14,16,32,128,132,135,136,142,144,256,259,263,270,384,385,387,525,641,642,656,771,1155,1165,1287,1294,1664]]
  }
}

the signature is the raw IQDB signature of the image. Two images are similar if their signatures are similar. The hash is the signature encoded as a hex string

to remove an image to the database, do DELETE /images/:id where :id is the ID number of the image

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:5588/images/1234

{ "post_id": 1234 }

To search for an image, POST a file to /query?limit=N, where N is the maximum number of results to return (default 10).

curl -F [email protected] 'http://localhost:5588/query?limit=10'

[
  {
    "hash":"iqdb_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",
    "post_id":1234,
    "score":100,
    "signature":{
      "avglf":[0.6492715250149176,0.05807835483220937,0.022854957762458],
      "sig":[[-3457,-1670,-1667,-1664,-771,-768,-655,-649,-642,-513,-512,-387,-385,-384,-281,-258,-256,-143,-134,-129,-128,-25,-15,-12,-6,2,8,29,157,643,645,648,770,897,899,1157,1793,1922,2048,2049],[-1667,-1537,-1158,-771,-649,-512,-387,-384,-262,-256,-134,-129,-6,-1,3,7,14,15,16,32,131,135,142,143,144,160,268,270,386,641,643,645,646,656,770,897,899,1411,1536,2947],[-2438,-1283,-1153,-777,-770,-769,-643,-269,-262,-257,-134,-6,3,7,14,16,32,128,132,135,136,142,144,256,259,263,270,384,385,387,525,641,642,656,771,1155,1165,1287,1294,1664]]
    }
  }
]

the response will contain the top N most similar images. the score field is the similarity rating, from 0 to 100. The post_id is the ID of the image, chosen when you added the image

you will have to determine a good cutoff score yourself. generally, 90+ is a strong match, 70+ is weak match (possibly a false positive), and <50 is no match

IQDB requires the following dependencies to build:

• A C++ compiler
• CMake 3.19+
• LibGD
• SQLite
• Python 3
• Git

run make to compile the project. the binary will be at ./build/release/src/iqdb

run make debug to compile in debug mode. the binary will be at ./build/debug/src/iqdb

you can also run cmake --preset release then cmake --build --preset release --verbose to build the project. make is simply a wrapper for these commands

you can run make docker to build the docker image

or use docker build . to build the docker image

see the Dockerfile for an example of which packages to install on Ubuntu

this version of IQDB is a fork from Danbooru's IQDB, and incorporates some changes from e621's IQDB. Danbooru's IQDB version of IQDB is a fork of the original IQDB, written by piespy. IQDB is based on code from imgSeek, written by Ricardo Niederberger Cabral. The IQDB algorithm is based on the paper Fast Multiresolution Image Querying by Charles E. Jacobs, Adam Finkelstein, and David H. Salesin.

IQDB is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See COPYING for details.

• https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/query
• https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/query/mrquery.pdf
• https://cliutils.gitlab.io/modern-cmake/
• https://riptutorial.com/cmake
• https://github.com/yhirose/cpp-httplib
• https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/evazion/iqdb
• https://github.com/e621ng/iqdb