Replacing mediaitems in Sitecore

This tip is from one of my colleagues Frederik Örnfelt who read my post about Adding a file to the Sitecore Media Library. But instead of adding files, he simply wanted to replace one item with another. Replacing media items is also done using the Sitecore MediaManager and a little stream magic:

Media sourceMedia = MediaManager.GetMedia(_sourceMediaItem);
Media targetMedia = MediaManager.GetMedia(mediaItem);
targetMedia.SetStream(sourceMedia.GetStream());

Thanks Frederik. And happy easter.

Adding a file to the Sitecore Media Library programatically

I thought it was tricky to read a file from disk and add it to the Sitecore media library untill I actually look into it. Sitecore has introduced 2 classes to help with the creation: The Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreator and the Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreatorOptions. 

The Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreatorOptions class is the real gem here, as it helps you pick the right database to write to, but it also creates the folders where the file must be placed. In other words; don’t worry about creating folder items yourself. Let the MediaCreatorOptions do that for you. Here is an example:

public MediaItem AddFile(string fileName, string sitecorePath, string mediaItemName)
{
  // Create the options
  Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreatorOptions options = new Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreatorOptions();
  // Store the file in the database, not as a file
  options.FileBased = false;
  // Remove file extension from item name
  options.IncludeExtensionInItemName = false;
  // Overwrite any existing file with the same name
  options.KeepExisting = false;
  // Do not make a versioned template
  options.Versioned = false;
  // set the path
  options.Destination = sitecorePath + "/" + mediaItemName; 
  // Set the database
  options.Database = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("master");

  // Now create the file
  Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreator creator = new Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreator();
  MediaItem mediaItem = creator.CreateFromFile("c:\\myfile.pdf", options);
  return mediaItem;
}

This exampel inserts the myfile.pdf into the media library and stores it as /pdffolder/uploaded/myfile:

MediaItem myFile = AddFile("c:\\myfile.pdf", "myfile", "/pdffolder/uploaded");

The MediaCreator is also available through the static implementation, Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaManager.Creator, so if you like statics, you can use that one instead.

The MediaCreator can also create media files from a MemoryStream:

// Remember to insert the appropriate try..catch..finally blocks.
// I have refrained from using them to compress the example.
Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreatorOptions options = new Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaCreatorOptions();
// Now use the options class as I did in the previous example
// ... insert code here ...
// ...
// Read the file from stream:
FileInfo fi = new System.IO.FileInfo(fileName);
FileStream fs = fi.OpenRead();
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
ms.SetLength(fs.Length);
fs.Read(ms.GetBuffer(), 0, (int)fs.Length);
ms.Flush();
fs.Close();
// Now create the file in Sitecore. This time I'll use the static implementation of the MediaCreator
Item mediaItem = Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaManager.Creator.CreateFromStream(ms, fileName, options);
ms.Dispose();

Media Library file names. Tired of guids?

Have you noticed that when uploading files to the media library, sometimes the resulting file name is a guid? If I upload an image, say Brian.jpg, I need to write ~/media/9B62BB56FD6040FAA56C6DB1D8A0BDE6.ashx in order to acces it from the front end.

And why is this a problem? Some search crawlers use the file name as title when the item is indexed. The Ankiro crawler can be configured to use the meta title (found in PDF or Word documents) or the file name as index title. Seeing a search result list with the file name 9B62BB56FD6040FAA56C6DB1D8A0BDE6 is not very explanatory for the end users.

Can this be configured? Well of course. This is Sitecore we are talking about.

The web.config contains loads of settings controlling the Media Library. Set the Media.UseItemPaths to true and your uploaded files will answer to the original file name so my Brian.jpg can be accessed at ~/media/Folder/Brian.ashx instead.

<!--  MEDIA - USE ITEM PATHS FOR URLS
      This setting controls if item paths are used for constructing media URLs.
      If false, short ids will be used.
      Default value: true
-->
<setting name="Media.UseItemPaths" value="true" />