Writing Plugins

There are already a few useful SME Uploader plugins out there, but there might come a time when you will want to build your own. Plugins can hook into the upload process or render a custom UI, typically to:

  • Render some custom UI element, e.g., StatusBar or Dashboard.
  • Do the actual uploading, e.g., XHRUpload or Tus.
  • Do work before the upload, like compressing an image or calling external API.
  • Interact with a third-party service to process uploads correctly, e.g., Transloadit or AwsS3.

See a full example of a plugin below.

Creating A Plugin

Plugins are classes that extend from SME Uploader’s Plugin class. Each plugin has an id and a type. ids are used to uniquely identify plugins. A type can be anything—some plugins use types to determine whether to do something to some other plugin. For example, when targeting plugins at the built-in Dashboard plugin, the Dashboard uses the type to figure out where to mount different UI elements. 'acquirer'-type plugins are mounted into the tab bar, while 'progressindicator'-type plugins are mounted into the progress bar area.

The plugin constructor receives the SME Uploader instance in the first parameter, and any options passed to uploader.use() in the second parameter.

const { Plugin } = require('@sme-uploader/core');
module.exports = class MyPlugin extends Plugin {
  constructor (uploader, opts) {
    super(uploader, opts)
    this.id = opts.id || 'MyPlugin'
    this.type = 'example'
  }
};

Methods

Plugins can implement methods in order to execute certain tasks. The most important method is install(), which is called when a plugin is .used.

All of the below methods are optional! Only implement the methods you need.

install()

Called when the plugin is .used. Do any setup work here, like attaching events or adding upload hooks.

install() {
  this.uploader.on('upload-progress', this.onProgress);
  this.uploader.addPostProcessor(this.afterUpload);
}

uninstall()

Called when the plugin is removed, or the SME Uploader instance is closed. This should undo all of the work done in the install() method.

uninstall() {
  this.uploader.off('upload-progress', this.onProgress);
  this.uploader.removePostProcessor(this.afterUpload);
}

update(state)

Called on each state update. You will rarely need to use this, it is mostly handy if you want to build a UI plugin using something other than Preact.

Upload Hooks

When creating an upload, SME Uploader runs files through an upload pipeline. The pipeline consists of three parts, each of which can be hooked into: Preprocessing, Uploading, and Postprocessing. Preprocessors can be used to configure uploader plugins, encrypt files, resize images, etc., before uploading them. SME Uploaders do the actual uploading work, such as creating an XMLHttpRequest object and sending the file. Postprocessors do their work after files have been uploaded completely. This could be anything from waiting for a file to propagate across a CDN, to sending another request to relate some metadata to the file.

Each hook is a function that receives an array containing the file IDs that are being uploaded, and returns a Promise to signal completion. Hooks are added and removed through SmeUploader methods: addPreProcessor, addSmeUploader, addPostProcessor, and their remove* counterparts. Normally, hooks should be added during the plugin’s install() method, and removed during the uninstall() method.

Additionally, upload hooks can fire events to signal progress.

When adding hooks, make sure to bind the hook fn beforehand! Otherwise, it will be impossible to remove. For example:

class MyPlugin extends Plugin {
  constructor(uploader, opts) {
    super(uploader, opts);
    this.id = opts.id || 'MyPlugin';
    this.type = 'example';
    this.prepareUpload = this.prepareUpload.bind(this); // ← this!
  }

  prepareUpload(fileIDs) {
    return Promise.resolve();
  }

  install() {
    this.uploader.addPreProcessor(this.prepareUpload);
  }

  uninstall() {
    this.uploader.removePreProcessor(this.prepareUpload);
  }
}

addPreProcessor(fn)

Add a preprocessing function. fn gets called with a list of file IDs before an upload starts. fn should return a Promise. Its resolution value is ignored. To change file data and such, use SME Uploader state updates, for example using setFileState.

addSmeUploader(fn)

Add an uploader function. fn gets called with a list of file IDs when an upload should start. SME Uploader functions should do the actual uploading work, such as creating and sending an XMLHttpRequest or calling into some upload service’s SDK. fn should return a Promise that resolves once all files have been uploaded.

You may choose to still resolve the Promise if some file uploads fail. This way, any postprocessing will still run on the files that were uploaded successfully, while uploads that failed will be retried when uploader.retryAll is called.

addPostProcessor(fn)

Add a postprocessing function. fn is called with a list of file IDs when an upload has finished. fn should return a Promise that resolves when the processing work is complete. Again, the resolution value of the Promise is ignored. This hook can be used to do any finishing work. For example, you could wait for file encoding or CDN propagation to complete, or you could do an HTTP API call to create an album containing all images that were just uploaded.

removePreProcessor/removeSmeUploader/removePostProcessor(fn)

Remove a processor or uploader function that was added previously. Normally, this should be done in the uninstall() method.

Progress events

Progress events can be fired for individual files to show feedback to the user. For upload progress events, only emitting how many bytes are expected and how many have been uploaded is enough. SME Uploader will handle calculating progress percentages, upload speed, etc.

Preprocessing and postprocessing progress events are plugin-dependent and can refer to anything, so SME Uploader doesn’t try to be smart about them. There are two types of processing progress events: determinate and indeterminate. Some processing does not have meaningful progress beyond “not done” and “done”. For example, sending a request to initialize a server-side resource that will serve as the upload destination. In those situations, indeterminate progress is suitable. Other processing does have meaningful progress. For example, encrypting a large file. In those situations, determinate progress is suitable.

preprocess-progress(fileID, progress)

progress is an object with properties:

  • mode - Either 'determinate' or 'indeterminate'.
  • message - A message to show to the user. Something like 'Preparing upload...', but be more specific if possible.

When mode is 'determinate', also add the value property:

  • value - A progress value between 0 and 1.

upload-progress(progress)

progress is an object with properties:

  • uploader - The uploader plugin that fired the event (this).
  • id - The file ID.
  • bytesTotal - The full amount of bytes to be uploaded.
  • bytesUploaded - The amount of bytes that have been uploaded so far.

postprocess-progress(fileID, progress)

progress is an object with properties:

  • mode - Either 'determinate' or 'indeterminate'.
  • message - A message to show to the user. Something like 'Preparing upload...', but be more specific if possible.

When mode is 'determinate', also add the value property:

  • value - A progress value between 0 and 1.

UI Plugins

UI Plugins can be used to show a user interface. SME Uploader plugins use preact v8.2.9 for rendering. preact is a very small React-like library that works really well with SME Uploader’s state architecture. SME Uploader implements preact rendering in the mount(target) and update() plugin methods, so if you want to write a custom UI plugin using some other library, you can override those methods.

Only preact@8.2.9 can be used for SME Uploader plugins. In SME Uploader 2.0, the restriction will be changed to a newer range of preact versions. For now, specify the dependency with a fixed version number:

"dependencies": {
  "preact": "8.2.9"
}

Plugins can implement certain methods to do so, that will be called by SME Uploader when necessary:

mount(target)

Mount this plugin to the target element. target can be a CSS query selector, a DOM element, or another Plugin. If target is a Plugin, the source (current) plugin will register with the target plugin, and the latter can decide how and where to render the source plugin.

This method can be overridden to support for different render engines.

render()

Render this plugin’s UI. SME Uploader uses Preact as its view engine, so render() should return a Preact element.
render is automatically called by SME Uploader on each state change.

Note that we are looking into ways to make SME Uploader’s render engine agnostic, so that plugins can choose their own favourite library—whether it’s Preact, Choo, jQuery, or anything else. This means that the render() API may change in the future, but we will detail exactly what you need to do if and when that happens.

JSX

Since SME Uploader uses Preact and not React, the default Babel configuration for JSX elements does not work. You have to import the Preact h function and tell Babel to use it by adding a /** @jsx h */ comment at the top of the file.

See the Preact Getting Started Guide for more on Babel and JSX.

/** @jsx h */
const { Plugin } = require('@sme-uploader/core');
const { h } = require('preact');

class NumFiles extends Plugin {
  render() {
    const numFiles = Object.keys(this.uploader.state.files).length;

    return (
      <div>
        Number of files: {numFiles}
      </div>
    )
  }
}

Locales

For any user facing language that you use while writing your Plugin, please provide them as strings in the defaultLocale property like so:

this.defaultLocale = {
  strings: {
    youCanOnlyUploadFileTypes: 'You can only upload: %{types}',
    youCanOnlyUploadX: {
      0: 'You can only upload %{smart_count} file',
      1: 'You can only upload %{smart_count} files',
      2: 'You can only upload %{smart_count} files'
    }
  }
}

This allows them to be overridden by Locale Packs, or directly when users pass locale: { strings: youCanOnlyUploadFileTypes: 'Something else completely about %{types}'} }. For this to work, it’s currently also required that you add:

// i18n
this.translator = new Translator([ this.defaultLocale, this.uploader.locale, this.opts.locale ]);
this.i18n = this.translator.translate.bind(this.translator);
this.i18nArray = this.translator.translateArray.bind(this.translator);
// ^-- Only if you're using i18nArray, which allows you to pass in JSX Components as well.

Example of a custom plugin

You can replace compressorjs method with any other work you need to do. This works especially well for async stuff, like calling an external API.

const { Plugin } = require('@sme-uploader/core');
const Translator = require('@sme-uploader/utils/lib/Translator');
const Compressor = require('compressorjs/dist/compressor.common.js');

class SmeUploaderImageCompressor extends Plugin {
  constructor (uploader, opts) {
    super(uploader, opts)
    this.id = this.opts.id || 'ImageCompressor'
    this.type = 'modifier'

    this.defaultLocale = {
      strings: {
        compressingImages: 'Compressing images...'
      }
    }

    const defaultOptions = {
      quality: 0.6
    }

    this.opts = Object.assign({}, defaultOptions, opts);

    // we use those internally in `this.compress`, so they
    // should not be overriden
    delete this.opts.success;
    delete this.opts.error;

    this.i18nInit();

    this.prepareUpload = this.prepareUpload.bind(this);
    this.compress = this.compress.bind(this);
  }

  setOptions(newOpts) {
    super.setOptions(newOpts);
    this.i18nInit();
  }

  i18nInit() {
    this.translator = new Translator([this.defaultLocale, this.uploader.locale, this.opts.locale]);
    this.i18n = this.translator.translate.bind(this.translator);
    this.setPluginState(); // so that UI re-renders and we see the updated locale
  }

  compress(blob) {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      new Compressor(blob, Object.assign(
        {},
        this.opts,
        {
          success: (result) => {
            return resolve(result);
          },
          error: (err) => {
            return reject(err);
          }
        }
      ))
    });
  }

  prepareUpload(fileIDs) {
    const promises = fileIDs.map((fileID) => {
      const file = this.uploader.getFile(fileID);
      this.uploader.emit('preprocess-progress', file, {
        mode: 'indeterminate',
        message: this.i18n('compressingImages')
      })

      if (file.type.split('/')[0] !== 'image') {
        return;
      }

      return this.compress(file.data).then((compressedBlob) => {
        this.uploader.log(`[Image Compressor] Image ${file.id} size before/after compression: ${file.data.size} / ${compressedBlob.size}`);
        this.uploader.setFileState(fileID, { data: compressedBlob });
      }).catch((err) => {
        this.uploader.log(`[Image Compressor] Failed to compress ${file.id}:`, 'warning');
        this.uploader.log(err, 'warning');
      });
    })

    const emitPreprocessCompleteForAll = () => {
      fileIDs.forEach((fileID) => {
        const file = this.uploader.getFile(fileID);
        this.uploader.emit('preprocess-complete', file);
      });
    }

    // Why emit `preprocess-complete` for all files at once, instead of
    // above when each is processed?
    // Because it leads to StatusBar showing a weird “upload 6 files” button,
    // while waiting for all the files to complete pre-processing.
    return Promise.all(promises)
      .then(emitPreprocessCompleteForAll);
  }

  install() {
    this.uploader.addPreProcessor(this.prepareUpload);
  }

  uninstall() {
    this.uploader.removePreProcessor(this.prepareUpload);
  }
}

module.exports = SmeUploaderImageCompressor;
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