sapphi-red/node-midec

This repository provides a simple tool for detecting whether an image file is animated or static. It works with several modern image formats including animated GIFs, APNG (animated PNG), animated WebP, and animated HEIF/AVIF files. The benefit: instead of trying to parse image files yourself or relying on external services, you get a lightweight library that runs directly in your JavaScript application. The library is built using WebAssembly, which is a compact, fast binary format that browsers and Node.js can execute. The original detection logic was written in Go, then converted to WebAssembly so it can run anywhere JavaScript runs, whether that's in a web browser, a Node.js server, or anywhere else. You feed it a file's raw bytes and ask "is this animated?" and it returns a simple true or false answer. Using it is straightforward: you import the isAnimated function, load a file's contents as binary data, pass it to the function, and get back whether the image is animated. This is useful for web applications that need to handle images differently based on whether they're static or animated, for example, showing a play button only on animated images, or optimizing delivery of static images differently than videos. It's also handy for image upload systems that want to validate or categorize files on the server side before storing them. The project is a JavaScript wrapper around existing Go code, meaning it benefits from the reliability of an already-tested detector while making it accessible to JavaScript developers. The README doesn't include extensive documentation beyond a basic example, so you'd want to check the GitHub repository directly for more details on supported formats or edge cases.