Contrib.social

Map Media Directories to physical directories

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 3 April 2019, about 5 years ago
Updated 3 March 2023, over 1 year ago

This module is a great improvement on the core media module in terms of logically splitting up all the uploaded media into manageable and user-friendly groups. This makes finding files much easier for users. However, an issue for some sites is that by default all the files get saved in the root files directory of the site, and whilst this isn't an issue for the users of the site - who don't see where the files are actually stored - it can be an issue for the site creators/maintainer/s for the following reasons :-

  1. there is a potential for a performance degradation as the number of files increases. Generally the more files in the same directory the slower the file system will be to retrieve them.
  2. there is an increasing chance of filename duplicates - with the resulting numerical suffixes being appended - e.g. image.jpg, image_0.jpg, image_1.jpg
  3. from a file-management perspective most people would prefer to organise files into a physical directory structure.

The good news is there is a very simple way to implement a physical file directory structure that mirrors the logical directory structure this module provides - described below...

What you need

  1. Drupal 8.7 recommended
  2. Media (core)
  3. Media library (core)
  4. this module - Media directories
  5. File (Field) Paths ( https://www.drupal.org/project/filefield_paths → )

Steps :-

  1. Obviously make sure all above modules are enabled.
  2. Create a taxonomy vocabulary - e.g. "Media Directories".
  3. Add terms relating to directory names - e.g. "Product Images", "Customre Logos", etc. N.B. The terms can be hierarchical
  4. Goto admin/config/media/media_directories to configure the taxonomy to use as the directories

  5. Goto admin/structure/media/manage/image/fields/media.image.field_media_image to configure File Field Path settings for the Image media type (you can configure the other media types as required)


    6. The key here is to use the following Media tokens for the File Path : [media:directory:entity:parents]/[media:directory:entity:name]
    It is advisable to :-

  • Not Remove slashes (/) from tokens
  • Cleanup using Pathauto
  • Transliterate

Now, when image is uploaded via the Media upload form the user gets to choose the logical directory to use (as is standard for this module). The difference now is that the logical directory maps directly to the (cleaned & transliterated) physical directory.

Other uses

There may be times when you don't want the user to be able to choose which logical and physical directory to place certain images in - because, as a site builder, you want to group certain types of images in specific specific directories - e.g. user profile images in the "user-profile-pictures" directory. You may well still want to use the media upload functionality. No problem: you can write a piece of custom code and utilise hook_form_FORM_ID_alter() to pre-select the required taxonomy term for the relevant form - and either hide or disable the Directory selection form widget.

📌 Task
Status

Active

Version

1.0

Component

Documentation

Created by

🇬🇧United Kingdom mautumn

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  • Comment over 1 year ago →
    🇬🇧United Kingdom ebo1958

    Hi, I hope it's OK for me to post my question here.
    I've set up media directories as listed above.
    I'm pretty sure I found the module through a post (which I sadly can't find anymore) where it was asked how to add media to a directory other than xxx.com/sites/default/files. When media directories was set up the folder name would replace the default directory. I was expecting xxx.com/new-directory/file-name.
    What I get is xxx.com/sites/default/files/new-directory/file-name.
    Would you please tell me if I have made a mistake in setting up the directories? Possibly there is another token I could use. Unfortunately, I'm not experienced enough to know what it could be.
    Any help would be appreciated.

  • Comment over 1 year ago →
    🇺🇸United States nixar San Antonio, TX

    I have good luck using filefield_paths with this module.

    I can even drag and drop documents from the browser and the path gets updated automatically.

    Configuration for the file field of the Document media type:
    Enable Filefield_paths?: checked
    then under Field (Field) Path Settings:
    File path: media-library/[media:directory:entity:parents]/[media:directory:entity:name]
    File path options: check all
    File name: leave unchanged
    File name options: check all
    Active Updating: checked

    The only caveat is that my folders can only be nested with a depth of 2 since the token [media:directory:entity:parents] can turn multiple nested terms into a flat one but I can leave with that.

  • Comment over 1 year ago →
    🇬🇧United Kingdom ebo1958

    Hello Nixar,
    Thanks for your post. I tried the steps you laid out and now just wonder if I have misunderstood how the module works.

    The entity:name is displayed as you say but it is the path to the PDF that is still in the sites/default/files folder.
    So the path I was expecting was xxx.com/media-library/new-directory/entity-name/xyz.pdf but I'm getting xxx.com/sites/default/files/media-library/new-directory/entity-name/xyz.pdf.

    Would you please let me know if it's possible to change the PDF path with this module. :-)

  • Comment over 1 year ago →
    🇨🇭Switzerland ytsurk Switzerland

    Drupal will always serve it's files from the sites/default/files folder!

    You could change that by messing with .htaccess (if you're running on apache).

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