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Media Library providers

The Media Library feature is powered by a back-end server package called Upload which leverages the use of providers.

By default Strapi provides a provider that uploads files to a local public/uploads/ directory in your Strapi project. Additional providers are available and add an extension to the core capabilities of the plugin, should you want to upload your files to another location, such as AWS S3 or Cloudinary.

There are both official providers maintained by Strapi discoverable via the Marketplace and many community maintained providers available via npm.

A provider can be configured to be private to ensure asset URLs will be signed for secure access.

Installing providers​

New providers can be installed using NPM or Yarn using the following format @strapi/provider-<plugin>-<provider> --save.

For example, to install the AWS S3 provider for the Media Library feature:

yarn add @strapi/provider-upload-aws-s3

Configuring providers​

Newly installed providers are enabled and configured in the /config/plugins file. If this file does not exist you must create it.

Each provider will have different configuration settings available. Please review the respective entry for that provider on dedicated pages below for the Strapi-maintained providers, or on the provider's Marketplace page.

The providers maintained by Strapi are the following. Clicking on a card will redirect you to a docs page with a configuration example:

Notes
  • Strapi has a default security middleware that has a very strict contentSecurityPolicy that limits loading images and media to "'self'" only, see the example configuration on the provider page or the middleware documentation for more information.
  • When using a different provider per environment, specify the correct configuration in /config/env/${yourEnvironment}/plugins.js|ts (see environments).

Configuration per environment​

When configuring your provider you might want to change the configuration based on the NODE_ENV environment variable or use environment specific credentials.

You can set a specific configuration in the /config/env/{env}/plugins.js|ts configuration file and it will be used to overwrite the default configuration.

Creating providers​

To implement your own custom provider you must create a Node.js module.

The interface that must be exported depends on the plugin you are developing the provider for. The following are templates for the Upload (Media Library) and Email features:

module.exports = {
  init(providerOptions) {
    // init your provider if necessary

    return {
      upload(file) {
        // upload the file in the provider
        // file content is accessible by `file.buffer`
      },
      uploadStream(file) {
        // upload the file in the provider
        // file content is accessible by `file.stream`
      },
      delete(file) {
        // delete the file in the provider
      },
      checkFileSize(file, { sizeLimit }) {
        // (optional)
        // implement your own file size limit logic
      },
      getSignedUrl(file) {
        // (optional)
        // Generate a signed URL for the given file.
        // The signed URL allows secure access to the file.
        // Only Content Manager assets will be signed.
        // Returns an object {url: string}.
      },
      isPrivate() {
        // (optional)
        // if it is private, file urls will be signed
        // Returns a boolean
      },
    };
  },
};

In the send function you will have access to:

  • providerOptions that contains configurations written in plugins.js|ts
  • settings that contains configurations written in plugins.js|ts
  • options that contains options you send when you call the send function from the email plugin service

You can review the Strapi-maintained providers for example implementations.

After creating your new provider you can publish it to npm to share with the community or use it locally for your project only.

Local providers​

If you want to create your own provider without publishing it on npm you can follow these steps:

  1. Create a providers folder in your application.
  2. Create your provider (e.g. /providers/strapi-provider-<plugin>-<provider>)
  3. Then update your package.json to link your strapi-provider-<plugin>-<provider> dependency to the local path of your new provider.
{
  ...
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "strapi-provider-<plugin>-<provider>": "file:providers/strapi-provider-<plugin>-<provider>",
    ...
  }
}
  1. Update your /config/plugins.js|ts file to configure the provider.
  2. Finally, run yarn or npm install to install your new custom provider.

Private providers​

You can set up a private provider, meaning that every asset URL displayed in the Content Manager will be signed for secure access.

To enable private providers, you must implement the isPrivate() method and return true.

In the backend, Strapi generates a signed URL for each asset using the getSignedUrl(file) method implemented in the provider. The signed URL includes an encrypted signature that allows the user to access the asset (but normally only for a limited time and with specific restrictions, depending on the provider).

Note that for security reasons, the content API will not provide any signed URLs. Instead, developers using the API should sign the urls themselves.

Private AWS S3 provider

You can find a short guide on how to create a private Amazon AWS S3 provider in the dedicated documentation.

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