If the Media assets you want to use in your library support oEmbed, then you might be able to use them with a minimal custom code. Before you go down the path of creating a custom media source plugin try this approach first.

oEmbed is a standard way of allowing third party sites to embed an asset represented by a URL. The Remote Video source in core uses the oEmbed features of YouTube and Vimeo. When you paste a link into a Slack channel, and it displays a pretty card preview, or an embedded video or Spotify playlist, that's oEmbed in action. Does the Media you want to embed have a canonical URL? If so, paste it into the tool here and see if it displays oEmbed info in the results.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn how to enable additional oEmbed providers as Media sources
• Use the contributed oEmbed Providers module for compatible providers
• Demonstrate how to create a custom oEmbed media source plugin to further customize the results

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to embed any oEmbed-compatible content as Media assets in Drupal.

When using the Drupal Media Library to browse for available Media entities to attach to your content, the interface that you see inside the modal window is created using Views. This means you can change it for your specific use-case. This is most useful when you want to expose filters for custom fields to allow users to more easily locate content in your library. As your library of media grows, you can create powerful application-specific ways for content authors to segment the list and find their assets.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn how to edit the Views used by the Drupal Media Library browser
• Add a new exposed filter for the custom tags field on some media entities
• Demonstrate how this change affects the user interface for locating and selecting media

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to customize the View used by the Media Library to add new filters and make other use-case specific changes.

Media Source plugins in Drupal have a powerful feature, called field mapping, that allows an administrator to configure a Media entity type to automatically populate the value of custom fields based on metadata retrieved from the source content. For example, you can add a creator field to the Remote Video Media type, which can use YouTube as a source. When a content author adds a new Remote Video entity they can provide a URL for the YouTube video. Then the source plugin can extract the creator's name from the YouTube API and use that data to populate a custom field. This saves the content author from having to do that work themselves.

In this tutorial we'll learn:

• How to discover what source metadata is available
• How to configure a Drupal Media type to automatically populate custom fields

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to add a custom field to a Media type on your Drupal site and automatically populate it with data retrieved from the source content.

One of the most powerful features of Drupal's Media Library is that it enables content authors to re-use media entities. Have a favorite image that you like to use with all blog posts about a specific topic? Or a default icon you want to use for a tutorial unless an alternative is provided? The Media Library can accommodate this without requiring you to keep a copy of the image locally and then attach it to every node where it's needed.

This can lead to a potential issue when an editor deletes an image, thinking they've also deleted all the content that used it. If they missed a post referencing the now deleted image, what happens when there is no image to show?

The contributed Entity Usage module provides a mechanism for tracking relationships between entities. This is essential functionality when working with a library of reusable media entities because it helps ensure that media entities attached to content are not deleted.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Discuss the use case for the Entity Usage module
• Learn how to configure Entity Usage to keep track of relationships between media entities and nodes that reference them
• Prevent media items from being deleted if they are in use somewhere on the site

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain what the Entity Usage module does, and how to use it to solve common problems related to deleting items from a large Media library.

A commonly asked question is, "How do you add images to the body of a content item in Drupal?" You can allow users to embed images, videos, or any other media into a field configured with a WYSIWYG editor, such as CKEditor. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to enable Drupal’s Insert Media button for CKEditor, and configure the corresponding text format so that it can render embedded Media entities.

Content authors can then use the Media Library to select images (or other media) to embed into the page.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn how to enable the Insert Media button for CKEditor
• Demonstrate how to insert media into the body of a content item (or any other field configured to use CKEditor)

By the end of this tutorial you should know how to configure Drupal to allow content authors to embed images in content items.

Drupal's media management tools, the Media and Media Library modules, provide content authors with drag-and-drop media and asset handling, full WYSIWYG editor integration, and a library of reusable media assets. There's minimal configuration required to get started, but full control via Drupal's standard Entity and Field systems for those who need it.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Provide an introduction to the media system in Drupal and its use-cases
• Explain the Drupal core features that the Media system is built on
• Link to other tutorials that will go into much more depth on these topics

By the end of this tutorial you should know what role the Media and Media Library core modules fill and know whether or not you'll want to make use of them on your project.

Media entities are standard Drupal fieldable content entities. For the most part, they function, and are managed, in the same way as Nodes. So if you've previously created content in Drupal, much of working with Media entities should be familiar -- with some notable exceptions related to the connections between Media types and the media resources they represent.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Get an overview of Media entities, Media types, and Media fields in Drupal
• Point to other tutorials that go into more depth on individual topics
• Learn some basic terminology and concepts related to the Media system in Drupal

By the end of this tutorial you'll have an overview of the pieces that make up the Media system in Drupal core.

In addition to using one of the existing generators, developers can write their own Drush generator commands. This can help speed up repetitive tasks and reduce the use of boilerplate code that is prone to human error.

Generators are provided through Drush's integration with the Drupal Code Generator project. Writing new generators isn't specific to Drush, though if you're creating generators for Drupal it is definitely easiest with Drush as a wrapper.

Similar to Drush commands, generators can be supplied by a Drupal module or declared globally. If you have a feature-specific functionality, it's best to ship your custom generator within the custom module. Otherwise, a global generator can be declared and used.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Explain the anatomy of a Drush generator
• Write a custom Drush generator for handling a site's development.services.yml file, and use it in a project

By the end of this tutorial you should understand how to create, or customize, a Drush code generator and use it in your project.

Code generators are great productivity boosters that allow generating scaffolds for common development tasks in Drupal. One of the most common use cases for generators is scaffolding the code required for a custom entity type. Custom entities require many files and complicated annotations in order to function properly. There is a lot of boilerplate code that is more-or-less the same for every entity type. Creating all the files is repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Generators can help automate this task and make creating your own custom entity types quicker.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Learn how to generate the code for a custom entity with Drush
• Learn about the options that generators provide for custom entities

By the end of this tutorial you should know how to generate custom entities with Drush.

The Drupal Entity API makes it easy to define new custom content entity types. And in most cases whenever you want to store custom content in Drupal you should use the Entity API instead of making CRUD queries directly to the database. This ensures your code is more consistent, and allows you to take advantage of all the features of the Entity API like access control, Views module integration, and automatic JSON:API support. As well as making it easier for others to extend your custom content by ensuring all the proper hooks and lifecycle events get invoked when new content items get created, updated, and deleted.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Walk through the process of creating a custom content entity

By the end of this lesson you'll be able to create your own custom content entity contained in a module.

One of Drupal's more powerful features is the fine-grained ability to control permissions and control access to content. The Entity API helps enable this functionality by providing an interface to help define access control.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Look at how access control is handled, using Drupal core as an example.
• Demonstrate how to implement access control in a custom module.
• Learn about the hooks that allow developers to modify access control for entities provided by another module.

By the end of this tutorial you should have a better understanding of the entity access control system and how to work with it.

Entities are the building blocks that make up just about everything on a Drupal site. Regardless of whether entities provide configuration information or content, they are absolutely crucial to Drupal's data model.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Look at the overall class hierarchy between the various entity types to see how they're related.
• Examine differences between configuration and content entities in the code that defines them.
• Look at some of the core code required to create an entity type.

By the end of this lesson you should be able to use an example to create a custom entity type in code.

Often when building a site in Drupal you'll find yourself wanting to display a list of nodes, or find entities created by a particular author, or locate some content based on a particular set of criteria. Rather than querying the database directly, Drupal provides a helper class, EntityQuery, to make things a bit easier. The EntityQuery class will probably look very familiar to you if you're familiar with the Database API, or the EntityFieldQuery class in Drupal 7.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Go through several examples of using EntityQuery to find subsets of content.
• Demonstrate how to iterate over the results of an EntityQuery query.

By the end of this tutorial, you should understand how to use entity queries to create custom sets of data from entities.

When learning Drupal development, it won't be long before you encounter the word "entity" and the Entity API. But what are entities in Drupal? How can you use them to build your site? When should you use the Entity API?

This tutorial will explain Drupal's Entity system from a high level. We'll look at:

• The main problems the Entity system solves
• Key terms you should know
• Key concepts we'll explore as we dive into Drupal's Entity API

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain the problems that the Entity API solves, and when you should use it in your own code.

Drupal includes the Symfony Validator component, and provides an Entity Validation API to assist in validating the values of fields on an entity. By using the Entity Validation API you can ensure that you're validation logic is applied to Entity CRUD operations regardless of how they are triggered. Whether editing an Entity via a Form API form, or creating a new Entity via the REST API, the same validation code will be used.

Using the Entity Validation API in order to validate the value of a field on an entity requires:

• Defining (or choosing) a constraint plugin
• Defining (or choosing) a validation plugin
• Adding the constraint to the field definition

In this tutorial, we'll look at how this Validation API works and how it can be used in custom code to ensure our entities have properly constructed values. We'll look at how this validation works in Drupal core and how we can add our own additional constraints. We'll also see how to work with the error messages returned from the validator when our entity doesn't pass validation.

Containers are sandboxed applications that can be run anywhere, no matter the underlying host OS. Docker containers are quite different from VMs in a number of ways that need to be understood before we can use them to develop Drupal sites.

In this tutorial, we'll:

• Define a container
• Explain how a container is a more limited environment than a VM

Media source plugins provide the link between media entities in Drupal and the actual media asset itself. They are the code that understand the difference between an image, a video, and a Tweet, and perform the translation that allows the media ecosystem to treat all media entities equally. For example, local image files, and remote YouTube videos, can both be catalogued in a similar way as media entities, but they need very different handling when it comes to displaying them.

Media sources are represented as plugins, there are a handful in Drupal core, and a developer can add new plugins to represent any type of media your application needs to catalogue.

In this tutorial we'll learn:

• How media source plugins relate to Media Types
• The responsibilities of a media source plugin

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to define the role of a media source plugin and understand what's required to define your own.

The Drupal core Media Library module provides an enhanced user interface for locating Media entities and attaching them to an article. It's a drop-in replacement for the default entity reference widget which uses a not very intuitive autocomplete field. Using the Drupal core Media Library module requires minimal configuration.

If you want to provide content creators with a gallery-like library of Media entities that they can browse through in order to find the ones they want to add to their content, the Media Library is the easiest way to do it. It can be configured to work with both Media fields and the CKEditor powered WYSIWYG editor commonly used for editing the body field of Drupal nodes. There's really no reason not to use it.

In addition to providing a better UI for locating existing Media entities, the Media Library provides a way to create new Media entities right from the content creation form. This prevents an otherwise confusing requirement where Media entities need to be created, via a different set of forms, before they can be used.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Install and configure the Media Library module to work with Media fields
• Use the user interface provided by the Media Library to improve the experience of finding and selecting Media entities to associate with a piece of content

By the end of this tutorial you'll know how to replace the default entity reference widget used for selecting Media entities with the much improved Media Library UI.

Media entities, like any content entity, work great with all the different features Drupal provides for changing the way things are displayed: view modes, Layout Builder, theme templates, and more. We're big fans of using view modes to create a component-like design system where entity types have view modes representing the different context in which they're displayed. Then we theme the view modes. This works great for displaying Media entities associated with a page and for changing the way that Media assets are displayed within the Media Library browser.

In this tutorial we'll:

• Create Hero and Sidebar view modes for Media entities
• Configure the Image Media type to use the new view modes and style each one differently
• Use the new view modes to render Image Media assets within a Layout
• Update the Media library view mode that's used by the Media Library browser to display additional information alongside the thumbnails used when selecting Media to attach to a page

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to change the way that Media assets are displayed by using view modes and display formatters in a Drupal site.