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webx-ui/module-media

The file manager of a WebX UI admin panel: a tree of folders, the files in them, uploads, search, and an image editor — on any disk Laravel can address.

Its front end is @webx-ui/module-media.

Status: the server half is complete. Folders, files, uploads, previews and image editing answer; the panel's front end is @webx-ui/module-media.

Requirements

• PHP 8.4+
• Laravel 13
• webx-ui/module-admin, webx-ui/localization, webx-ui/mcp, webx-ui/nested-set
• intervention/image 3 (GD or Imagick)

Install

The section appears in the panel's manifest on its own. Publish the configuration to change anything in it:

What it owns, and what it does not

The library — folders, files, and what can be done to a file — is this module's.

An entity's attachments are not. Attaching a file to a product or an article copies it into that entity's own media, so ten thousand product photographs never enter a tree an editor has to browse, and deleting a file in the library cannot break a product card. The price is duplicated bytes and no "where used", and it is paid knowingly.

alt and title are not stored here either: one image used by two articles needs two captions, so they belong to the entity that uses it, beside the reference.

Fields on a screen

Four field types are registered for described screens, matching the four the front end draws:

Only the key and the captions are stored. The address never is — a library that moves to another disk would otherwise mean rewriting everything already saved. On read each value is resolved with url and thumb, name, extension, mime, size, and width and height for a picture: the whole set, because a Blade template has nothing to ask the library with, and width and height are what keep a page from jumping. Whole lists are looked up in one query.

props.accept is checked against the row that is fetched for the resolve anyway, so a .zip cannot be posted into a gallery by hand. A key whose file has since been deleted is kept: it resolves to url: null and the field draws a broken card, because one missing picture out of twenty must not be the reason a page cannot be saved.

API

Everything lives under the panel's API path, behind the panel session and a permission.

The editor takes operations rather than a finished picture: the canvas in the browser works on a preview, and what it could send back is smaller than the original.

Optimizing

A JPEG, PNG or still WebP is turned the right way up, stripped of its metadata, scaled down to max_side and saved as a WebP on its way in; Optimize in the panel (and optimize_images) runs the pictures already there through the same steps, over the same key and in the same format. The steps are webx-media.optimize.steps — add a class implementing WebxUi\Media\Images\Optimizing\OptimizeStep to add your own.

Convert to WebP

Off unless asked for — the checkbox in the Optimize dialog, convert: true of media_optimize_images (honours dry_run), or php artisan webx:media:webp [--dry-run] [--directory=] [--id=]. A still JPEG or PNG (and a HEIC, where Imagick is built with libheif) becomes a WebP when that is smaller; transparency is kept, GIF, SVG and animated pictures are left alone. Per file, so that a failure leaves the site as it was:

1. the WebP is written beside the old file under the same uuid — media/9f/2a/<uuid>.webp;
2. in one transaction: the row takes the new key (path, extension, MIME, file name, hash, size, dimensions), the old key is kept in media_aliases, and every reference to the old basename is rewritten — every text and JSON column of every table, without the caps the delete check uses, history and versions included (usage.rewrite_ignore names what is skipped);
3. then the old bytes and old previews go, and the rendered caches (settings, block regions, menus) are let go of by those modules themselves, on module-admin's StoredContentRewritten event — the library does not know whose caches there are.

Why history is rewritten: restoring an old version must not bring back a key whose bytes are gone. The alias covers what no rewrite reaches — search engines, CDNs, e-mails, links on other sites: the old public address (/storage/media/…/<uuid>.jpg, any ?v=) answers 301 to the new one for a disk the site serves itself, and files/by-path and the field lookups find the file by either key. The old bytes are not kept for a grace period: a 301 serves every old link, and the space is the point.

The editor's kept original (original_path) stays as it arrived, in its own format — it is the picture before anything was done to it. Restore original re-encodes it into the file's current format, so the key never lies about what it holds.

Each file is reported as converted, unchanged (WebP would not be smaller), skipped or missing, with bytes before and after and the number of references rewritten.

A module that keeps keys where the schema cannot show them implements WebxUi\Media\Usage\UsageRewriter beside UsageSource on its tagged source; it is called inside the same transaction.

MCP

list_directories, list_files, search_files, get_file, create_directory, delete_directory, rename_file, move_files, upload_from_url, optimize_images, delete_files. Every mutating tool takes dry_run; a refusal is an MCP error (ToolFailure), not an ok: false answer.

• delete_directory deletes an empty folder only: recursive deletion is the one operation here that a mistaken call cannot take back, and an agent cannot ask the question the panel asks first.
• delete_files refuses a file the site still uses and says where, unless force: true. The panel keeps the same rule: it asks files/usage (or a folder's contents) first and shows the places in one question with «delete anyway», and the delete endpoints refuse without force. WebxUi\Media\Usage\MediaUsage asks every source tagged MediaUsage::TAG; the one that ships, DatabaseUsage, reads the schema — foreign keys into media_files, and the last segment of the file's key (a uuid) inside text and JSON columns. History, logs and queues are skipped (webx-media.usage.ignore).
• upload_from_url fetches only from the public internet: the host is resolved, every address is checked (loopback, private, link-local, reserved, in both families and inside IPv6), the connection is pinned to the checked address, and redirects are followed by hand and checked the same way. The type is sniffed from the bytes, the name gets an extension from the upload white list, and the panel's upload rules apply. webx-media.remote.allow_hosts names hosts on the site's own network that may be fetched anyway.

Configuration

config/webx-media.php. The disk is the module's own setting rather than the application's default — a site whose storage is local may still want its library on S3, and a client installation often has nothing but public:

Everything goes through Laravel's filesystem, so a remote disk behaves like a local one. A disk with a configured url serves files directly; a private bucket gets temporary signed addresses.

An S3 disk needs its adapter, which Laravel does not ship and this module deliberately does not require — most installations never point at a bucket, and nobody should carry the AWS SDK to store files in public:

Without it the disk resolves and then fails on first use with Class "League\Flysystem\AwsS3V3\PortableVisibilityConverter" not found, which names Flysystem rather than the missing package.

Uploads are limited by size and by a white list of types, and images are refused above image.max_pixels before they are decoded — a small file can still be a very large picture.

Chunked uploads

The panel uploads into Files a piece at a time through module-admin's protocol (POST uploads, PATCH uploads/{id}, …), under the purpose media.library (FileStore::UPLOAD_PURPOSE): media.upload or media.manage may start one, the extensions are upload.extensions (checked against the file name, so a HEIC a browser declares no type for still goes) and the size is upload.max_size — both refused when the session is created. POST files/chunked then claims the finished file and runs it through exactly what POST files does: the same rules on the content, now read from the bytes, the same pipeline, the same deduplication, the same answer. PHP's upload_max_filesize and post_max_size only bound a piece (webx-admin.uploads.chunk_mb), not the file; pieces of abandoned uploads are swept by webx:prune-uploads.

Permissions

media.view, media.upload, media.manage. Uploading is separate from managing on purpose: an editor who may add a picture to an article is not necessarily someone who may delete a folder full of them.

Languages

Ten shipped: en, ru, uk, de, pl, fr, es, it, pt, tr. English is the fallback, and it is laid under the chosen language line by line, so a half-translated group shows what it has and English for the rest.

Only English, Russian and Ukrainian have been read by a speaker; the other seven are machine translations. A correction from someone who speaks the language is welcome — they are plain PHP arrays in lang/.

Licence

MIT.