How to Perform Conversion After Media Creation in Spatie Media Library for Laravel

If you’re working with media files in your Laravel application, you might already be familiar with the Spatie Media Library package. It allows developers to easily associate files with Eloquent models, generate conversions, and organize media. One common use case is converting media files after they’ve been uploaded or created. In this blog, we’ll discuss how to perform generation conversion after media creation using Spatie Media Library in Laravel.

Why Media Conversion is Important

Media conversion is the process of transforming uploaded files into different formats or sizes. This is particularly useful when you need different versions of the same media file, like resizing images for thumbnails, web-optimized versions, or applying filters.

By handling conversions in the background, you can optimize performance, save bandwidth, and improve user experience by delivering media in the right format for various devices.

Steps for Media Conversion After Media Creation

When you upload a media file in Spatie Media Library, it can automatically perform conversions, but in some cases, you may want to convert media after the media has already been created. Here’s how you can do that using Media::query() and the PerformConversionsJob.

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Media::query()
    ->where('model_type', Post::class) // Filter media related to the Post model
    ->eachById(function ($media) {     // Iterate over each media item by ID

        // Create a new conversion job
        $job = (new PerformConversionsJob(
            ConversionCollection::createForMedia($media), // Generate conversions for the media
            $media,                                      // The media instance
            false                                        // only for missing
        ))->onQueue(config('media-library.queue_name'));  // Push job to the designated queue

        // Dispatch the conversion job
        dispatch($job);
    });

Breakdown of the Code:

Media::query(): This initiates a query on the media table, which holds all media records handled by Spatie Media Library.
where('model_type', Post::class): This filters the media records to include only those related to the Post model. You can customize this to any model where the media is attached.
eachById(): Efficiently loops over each media item one by one, ensuring memory optimization even with large datasets.
PerformConversionsJob: This is the core of the conversion process. It takes care of performing all the necessary media conversions.
dispatch($job): Dispatches the job to the queue system so that media conversions are handled asynchronously.

Setting Up the Queue

To handle conversions in the background, ensure that your Laravel queue is properly configured. You can specify the queue name using media-library.queue_name in the config file.

Here’s a basic setup to configure the queue for the conversion jobs:

In your .env file, ensure the queue driver is set:
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```
QUEUE_CONNECTION=database
```

Run the queue worker:

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php artisan queue:work // or horizon

Now, when the code is executed, Laravel will handle the media conversion jobs in the background, allowing the application to stay responsive.

Use Cases for Media Conversion

Post-Upload Image Resizing: After a user uploads an image, you can generate multiple sizes for thumbnails, previews, and high-resolution displays.
Document Conversion: You can convert uploaded documents into PDFs or other formats for easier distribution.
Audio/Video Conversion: Automatically convert uploaded audio or video files into web-friendly formats like MP3 or MP4.

Why Use the Queue?

Queuing these tasks is essential when dealing with large media files or complex conversions, as it prevents the server from timing out or slowing down. Queues improve user experience by offloading heavy tasks to be processed asynchronously.

Conclusion

Handling media conversions after the media is created is a powerful feature of Spatie Media Library. The ability to customize the conversion process and queue jobs ensures that your application remains performant while delivering media in various formats. By implementing this approach, you can efficiently manage and convert media files in the background, enhancing both the backend functionality and the user experience.

Make sure to monitor your queued jobs and conversions, and always test different scenarios to ensure your application runs smoothly with different media types.

This is how you can manage generation conversion after media is created using Spatie Media Library in Laravel. If you’re looking to implement a similar solution in your Laravel app, feel free to tweak the code and configurations to suit your project’s requirements.