Media

Media library, storage providers and IMediaService usage

Overview

Smartstore ships with a comprehensive media library for images, videos and downloadable files. Metadata about each file is stored in the MediaFile table while the binary data lives in a pluggable storage provider. Files are grouped in folders, tagged and tracked so that unused assets can be cleaned up safely.

IMediaService is the central entry point used by both the admin UI and application code. It hides where files are physically stored and exposes helpers for querying, saving and deleting media.

Storage providers

The physical blob for a MediaFile is managed by an IMediaStorageProvider. Two providers are included:

• FileSystemMediaStorageProvider – stores files under /Storage on disk. This is the default provider used in new installations.

• DatabaseMediaStorageProvider – persists binary data in the database for scenarios where a shared file system is not available.

Providers implement IMediaSender/IMediaReceiver so media can be moved between backends. MediaStorageConfiguration determines which provider is active and the MediaMover service performs migrations.

You can specify which provider to use in the MediaSettings.

Working with media

IMediaService offers high level operations for everyday tasks:

• Locate files via GetFileByIdAsync, GetFileByPathAsync or by running a MediaSearchQuery.

• Create and update files with SaveFileAsync.

• Copy, move or delete files, taking care of duplicate detection and track checks.

• Generate public URLs through GetUrl, which internally cooperates with the imaging subsystem for resizing and caching.

Upload example

public class UploadService
{
    private readonly IMediaService _mediaService;

    public UploadService(IMediaService mediaService)
    {
        _mediaService = mediaService;
    }

    public async Task<string> UploadAsync(Stream stream, string fileName)
    {
        // Store file permanently inside the "uploads" folder.
        var path = _mediaService.CombinePaths("uploads", fileName);
        var info = await _mediaService.SaveFileAsync(path, stream, isTransient: false);

        // Build a public URL. Additional ProcessImageQuery options can resize on the fly.
        return _mediaService.GetUrl(info, new ProcessImageQuery());
    }
}

Setting ImagePostProcessingEnabled to false temporarily disables expensive image transformations during bulk imports.

Tracking and metadata

Each media file may have tags and localized ALT or title text. When a file is associated with other entities (e.g. a product picture) a MediaTrack record is created. Tracking prevents files from being deleted accidentally and allows the system to detect orphaned media.

Duplicate files can be detected by the IMediaDupeDetectorFactory before saving. Querying helpers like CountFilesGroupedAsync or SearchFilesAsync support housekeeping tasks in custom code.

URLs and imaging

IMediaUrlGenerator creates public URLs under predictable paths such as /media/123/thumbnail.jpg. When a ProcessImageQuery is supplied to GetUrl the imaging pipeline resizes or crops the image and caches the result in /media/thumbs as documented in the Imaging section.

Some administrative tasks require the Media-Manager plugin.