SilverStripe FilePond module

Intro

Allow usage of FilePond fields in the front end.

Use as a regular UploadField and let it do its magic!

$pond = new FilePondField('Image');

File extension

In order for this uploader to work properly, your files need to have a IsTemporary boolean field. This is provided by the FilePondFileExtension class.

SilverStripe\Assets\File:
  extensions:
    - LeKoala\FilePond\FilePondFileExtension
LeKoala\FilePond\FilePondField:
  enable_auto_thumbnails: true

You can of course implement your own extension. As a bonus, you can toggle the enable_auto_thumbnails to true in order to get thumbnails for images in the cms.

Temporary files

Because files are upload in ajax, maybe they will never be used if the user never submit the form.

In order to avoid storing unecessary files, all files uploaded are flagged by default as IsTemporary.

All files are then unflagged as IsTemporary when the form is submitted and saved into a record.

Although this should all work automatically, if you manually use the FilePondField without saving into a record you need to manually unflag the files yourself.

By default, old temporary files are deleted automatically by the FilePondField::clearTemporaryUploads method. You can control how often files are deleted based on your upload frequencies (see auto_clear_threshold). Since the files are deleted on upload, it might take some time if you have a lot of files to delete. This is disabled by default and you need to enable it with auto_clear_temp_folder set to true

If that's the case, maybe it's better to run a cron task every 5 minutes that calls this method in order to avoid burdening the end user. Have a look at my simple jobs module to do that.

Tracking files

Most of the time, uploaded files are linked to a record. The primary mechanism of moving uploaded files out of the IsTemporary state is done through the FilePondField::saveInto method.

In order to maximize tracking, the FilePondFileExtension also add ObjectID and ObjectClass fields to the File table.

This allows to associate files easily to your DataObject classes without adding specific has_many or many_many relations, which either create extra tables or required reciprocal relationships.

Instead, while moving files out of IsTemporary state, we also associate the current form record to the file.

Configuring field instances

This module configure FilePondFields based on a config data attribute. It will generate most of the config by itself, however you can customize frontend behaviour with the following method:

$pond->addFilePondConfig('allowDrop', false);

Please refer to FilePond documentation to see what are the public properties.

Poster images

You can enable dedicated plugins

LeKoala\FilePond\FilePondField:
  enable_image: true
  enable_poster: true
  enable_auto_thumbnails: true

These modules enable poster support to display nices images attached to the upload field

Validation, resizing and croping

For files

By default, this module validate file size and file extension in the front end thanks to the FilePond plugins.

You can read more here:

https://pqina.nl/filepond/docs/patterns/plugins/file-validate-size/ https://pqina.nl/filepond/docs/patterns/plugins/file-validate-type/

For images

We also installed the image size validation, resize and crop plugins. This allows to avoid user uploading incorrect format that might be difficult to crop or resize (GD crashing anyone?).

You can define custom image sizes on your records based on convention. For example, for a squared avatar and a large image.

MyRecord:
  image_sizes:
    Avatar: [512,512,'max']
    SquareImage: [512,512,'crop']
    LargeImage: [1080,1080]

Parameters are width, height. You can set a 3rd parameter to:

• 'min' to ensure the file is above this size (default if no value is specified).
• 'max' to ensure the file is below this size.
• 'crop' to crop the file to this ratio (keep the largest image possible matching this ratio).
  • Example : Setting 512,512 means a squared ratio (effectively, this is 1:1)
• 'resize' resize the file to this size (keeps aspect ratio of the file).
• 'crop_resize' crop and resize the file to this size (use our set aspect ratio).

Image manipulations happen on the client side, the file that gets sent to the server will have the configured size. Very useful to deal with large images or avoiding scaling files after upload.

If defined, the field description and the validation will be automatically applied.

You can also use the setImageSize method directly on the uploader instance with similar parameters.

$fields->replaceField("Photo", $Photo = new FilePondField("Photo"));
$Photo->setImageSize(300, 200, 'crop');

You can read more here:

https://pqina.nl/filepond/docs/patterns/plugins/image-validate-size/ https://pqina.nl/filepond/docs/api/plugins/image-resize/ https://pqina.nl/filepond/docs/api/plugins/image-crop/

Renaming and organizing files

One thing is certain, your user tends to name files incorrectly. The end result is that your asset folder is full of stuff with crazy names.

In order to bring some sanity to your asset folder, this module work in two ways.

Default folder

The default behaviour from SilverStripe is to upload everything in the Uploads folder. But wouldn't it be more useful to organize things based on your class ? Project files go to Project folder. Sounds good?

Great, because this is exactly how it works.

By default, if a record is associated to the form, all files will be uploaded to NameOfTheClass/NameOfTheUploader.

This behaviour is fully configurable. If your DataObject implements a getFolderName method, you can retain paths based on your own logic (for example NameOfTheClass/IDOfTheRecord). By default, I don't recommend to store files based on records IDs because : 1. IDs are not known for new records, 2. If you have lots of records, you will have lots of folders that are slow to parse and display.

Renaming files according to a pattern

Let's say your users can upload avatars. But it wouldn't be too good to allow crazy names in a public facing website right?

Don't worry, I'm here to help:

$pond = new FilePondField('Avatar');
$pond->setRenamePattern("{field}_{date}.{extension}");

By setting a rename pattern, you can rename dynamically the files before they are saved to the asset store (which is really great).

The following pattern will rename the file to Avatar_yyyymmdd.jpg. You can also set static parts, for example:

$pond = new FilePondField('Avatar');
$pond->setRenamePattern($member->Username . "_avatar.{extension}");

You can also use the built-in Filepond renamer like this. Files will be renamed in the frontend before being upload to the server:

$pond = new FilePondField('Avatar');
$pond->setRenameFile('my_avatar_' . time());

Chunked uploads

If you need to upload large videos, you can use setChunkUploads. File will be uploaded in chunks (size is computed automatically based on server settings) and then merged on the last upload.

$fields->push($Video = new FilePondField("Video"));
$Video->setChunkUploads(true);

You can also enable this globally with chunk_by_default.

Requirements

In order to provide a working out of the box experience, Filepond is provided as a custom element imported from https://github.com/lekoala/formidable-elements

Custom server config

If for some reason you use a custom endpoint for your FilePond, you can use the setCustomServerConfig. You can pass an array of options (for simple configs) or a string that should be the name of a global js handler.

Config flags

FilePondField has the following configurable options

LeKoala\FilePond\FilePondField:
  auto_clear_temp_folder: true
  auto_clear_threshold: null #defaults to 1 day in prod env
  enable_default_description: true
  enable_requirements: true
  enable_poster: false
  chunk_by_default: false
  enable_auto_thumbnails: true
  poster_width: 352
  poster_height: 264

Todo

• More tests and refactoring

Sponsored by

This module is kindly sponsored by RESTRUCT

Compatibility

Tested with 4.5 to 4.13 but should work on any 4.x projects

Maintainer

LeKoala - [email protected]