Module Development

Create a Custom Media Source Plugin for Drupal 8, 9, and 10

The Drupal Media Library and Media ecosystem can be integrated with any third-party media provider by defining new media source plugins. Media types (Media entity bundles) have an important distinction compared to other content entity types like nodes. Every media type inherits from a specific media source plugin. The source plugin provides domain-specific knowledge about the kind of resource being represented. For example, media types dealing with images know how to validate file extensions and render <img> tags. Media types dealing with remotely hosted videos might know how to retrieve thumbnails from a remote API, and display an HTML video player and transcript.

In this tutorial we'll learn how to:

  • Define a new source plugin
  • Integrate a third-party API via its existing PHP library

By the end of this tutorial you should be able to create a new source plugin that exposes any third-party media resources you want to integrate with Drupal.