Restriction types

When a restricted adapter is created, then the admin can choose between four types of the adapter:

Folder

The folder type is the simplest one and just points to an existing folder in the filesystem where the root files should be created in.

Own

This type uses the current logged in user and shows only images of its own folder. Means when the root folder of the adapter points to /images/users and the current logged in user has the ID 333, then the adapter shows only images from the folder /images/users/{hash of 333}. The user has then no possibility to navigate outside of the folder or upload images into another folder.

As default the user folder is an md5 hash of the user ID and the site secret. There is an option to disable hashing and use the real user ID in the adapter. But this should only be used when you are aware that secure information can be revealed.

Item

This type makes only sense when items like articles are edited. It takes the context of the item into account and it's ID. Means when the root folder of the adapter points to /images/items and an article with the ID 89 is edited, then the adapter shows only images from the folder /images/items/com_content.article/{hash of 89}. The user has then no possibility to navigate outside of the folder or upload images into another folder.

As default the item folder is an md5 hash of the item ID and the site secret. There is an option to disable hashing and use the real item ID in the adapter. But this should only be used when you are aware that secure information can be revealed.

Category

This type makes only sense when items like articles are edited. It takes the context and the category ID of the item into account. Means when the root folder of the adapter points to /images/categories and an article with the ID 56 and category ID 13 is edited, then the adapter shows only images from the folder /images/categories/com_content.article/{hash of 13}. The user has then no possibility to navigate outside of the folder or upload images into another folder.

As default the item folder is an md5 hash of the category ID and the site secret. There is an option to disable hashing and use the real category ID in the adapter. But this should only be used when you are aware that secure information can be revealed.

Thumbnails

DPMedia creates a thumbnail out of the original file on the fly while fetching the images list. These thumbnails are only used in the images list for performance reasons to not load tons of high resolution files. In the options the admin can define per account where the thumbnails should be stored on the local filesystem.

DPMedia is fetching only 10 thumbnails per request, otherwise it it can reach the execution time on large folders. So if an image has no local thumbnail a default placeholder will be shown instead.

Automatic resize

The plugin supports automatic resize when images are uploaded or the list is created. The admin can choose between the following four options when resizing should be applied:

• No
  No resizing is performed.
• On upload
  Images are resized on upload only. Existing images do keep their dimensions.
• On the fly
  Existing images on the local filesystem will be changed when the list is fetched. This means on every time the list is displayed, the images are checked for proper dimensions. This is handy when images are uploaded outside of the media manager. On the other side it makes the loading time slower as more file operations must be done during a request.
• Upload and on the fly
  A combination of both methods above.

When only a width or height is set, then a resize is performed and the aspect ratio is kept. Like that will all images have the same width or height. When both dimensions are set, then an option is shown which lets you define if the aspect ratio should be kept or not. If it is not kept, then each image has the same dimensions but the smaller side gets cropped. Here are some examples listed for a better understanding: