Release of Media 2.0

Development of Media has been quite intensive lately and is on his way to be 2.0. You will find below a few changes worth being mentioned.

Backend Module revamped

The Backend has gained maturity. First of all, it is better integrated with the rest of the CMS in terms of look & feel (ex. of the top docheader now matches the UI of TYPO3). Amongst the new features, one can now make advanced searches by  combining various criteria (also called “facets”). Under the hood, it uses the excellent jQuery plugin Visual Search which has been integrated in Media. Another improvement, is the ability to edit inline title, category or whatever metadata in the Grid without  opening the detail view of a file. This “small” addition will significantly simplify and improve the User Experience regarding content edition. User Experience will be even better when the multi-editing will be implemented… but this is not for this release.

Code wise, the source used for rendering the Grid in Media has been taken out and transformed into a new extension called Vidi which aims to be a generic list engine for the BE. This brings a great benefit because the module is able to display a Grid for any type of data and includes advanced filtering, inline editing, etc. As a result, you will notice a new dependency to Vidi. Since it isn’t the purpose of this post to explain how Vidi works, I invite those interested to refer to the on-line documentation.

File Picker unified

One of the last patches made in Media is the ability to use this module everywhere in the BE where files are to be picked. Previously, there was only a small popup window which wasn’t very convenient for End Users when dealing with large  amounts of files. A more extended window has been integrated thanks to the sponsoring of web-vision.

Multi Storage implemented

Another powerful feature coming with 2.0 is that Media is now capable of handling multiple storages. A storage can seen as a “bucket” where you can isolate your files. There is a drop down menu at the top where you can see which storage is currently used. This enables you to select a dedicated storage when you have to protect files for instance. Permission can be granted in the BE User permission under the File Mount section. Moving files between storage can be achieved by selecting multiple media in the Grid and clicking the mass action menu at the bottom. N.B. this feature was added in FAL in TYPO3 6.1.6 which is now the minimum requirement.

Metadata changes

One of the nice improvements of TYPO3 6.2 is the “advanced” metadata that everyone can build upon. It is packed in the form of an extension named "filemetadata" which has to be activated on demand. As a result, metadata in Media 2.0 was adapted and some fields were removed. Fields such as "hidden", "deleted", "starttime", "endtime" have been removed from the TCA. FAL has the underlying concept that a record in the database is the exact representation of the File. In summary fields:

Media API

Close to no changes have been made since TYPO3 6.2 will bring some important structural changes. The  first is the split of all metadata in a dedicated table. This implies to restructure the API quite a bit and I didn’t want to touch anything before knowing what to update. As of TYPO3 6.2, FAL will be capable of handling metadata translation by default which is a nice addition.

Do you have a demo?

Yes, there is one online demo: it is the Bootstrap Package (= Bootstrap Distribution in TYPO3 6.2) that I am maintaining. Head to http://bootstrap.typo3cms.demo.typo3.org/typo3/ with “admin”, “password” and open the Media module, try linking a file to a an Image Content Element and check the new Frontend User module which is powered by Vidi…

How to install?

Media can be download from the TER. For developers, the recommended way is to use Git.

Activate the extensions in the Extension Manager as normal. There is nothing particular to configure except for the storage record(s). You will be warned in the Media module if the configuration is not adequate. Also not very obvious, the documentation of Media is to be found on Github. For some reason, the docs are not processed by the documentation server, an issue I must clarify with the Documentation team.

How to migrate from version 1.x to 2.x?

Make sure TYPO3 6.1.6 dependency is met.

• Download and install EXT:vidi from TER or Git.
• Upgrade EXT:media to 2.0
• Upgrade EXT:metadata (which was also updated with new features / bug fixes)

DAM FAL migration

FYI and because the topic is hot. I have recently used successfully we_dam2fal to migrate three DAM instances, thanks to www.websedit.de. There were some patches required and I put a forked version on Github. However, don’t expect the migration to be smooth in every aspects. Most often, I first had to clean up the current DAM setup before succeeding in the migration.

Compatibility with TYPO3 6.2?

It is currently not compatible with TYPO3 6.2. As said, the file table structure has changed quite a lot in TYPO3 6.2. Basically, metadata has been split in a different table and Media will need to be adapted accordingly. However, there are some good perspectives Media will be compatible with TYPO3 6.2 as I have some work planned in January about this topic!

Next steps

They are plenty of things to do. The first one crossing my mind is the multi-editing feature. I also would like to be able to store the searches (“selections” as called in DAM) to become active  collections. We now have a global approach provided by Vidi and the main advantage is that every new feature is applicable for all Vidi modules at once.

Sponsors

Without sponsors, we wouldn’t have reached this stage. Let me mention some people which have supported my work:

• Gebruederheitz http://gebruederheitz.de/ - which made the Vidi module possible.
• Ecodev http://ecodev.ch/ - as usual
• Web-Vision http://www.web-vision.de/ - for the file picker
• Cobweb http://www.cobweb.ch/fr/ -  for sponsoring some usability patches here and there.

Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need a new feature and would like to sponsor it.

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