Embedded Media Providers

A guide to creating a custom embed providers in Umbraco

The Rich Text Editor in Umbraco has an 'Embed' button, that when pressed, slides open a panel. This panel enables editors to paste the URL of a third-party media resource to embed in content.

The Rich Text Editor Embed Button

For example, a YouTube Video...

Embedding a music video from YouTube

The task of an EmbedProvider is to accept the pasted URL and write out the appropriate markup for the third-party provider associated with the URL.

Embed Provider Configuration

Embed Providers are registered with the EmbedProvidersCollection during Composition when Umbraco boots.

The list of available default Embed Providers in an Umbraco install are as follows:

• YouTube

• YouTube Shorts

• Twitter

• Vimeo

• Dailymotion

• Flickr

• SlideShare

• Kickstarter

• Getty Images

• Ted

• SoundCloud

• Issuu

• Hulu

• Giphy

You can see the details of these, and any recent editions in the C# developer reference for Umbraco.Web.Media.EmbedProviders.

Configuring a new provider

Create a new provider by creating a C# class that implements the IEmbedProvider interface. Umbraco provides a convenient OEmbedProviderBase class as a starting point.

namespace Umbraco.Cms.Core.Media.EmbedProviders;

public abstract class OEmbedProviderBase : IEmbedProvider
{
    protected OEmbedProviderBase(IJsonSerializer jsonSerializer);

    public abstract string ApiEndpoint { get; }
    public abstract string[] UrlSchemeRegex { get; }
    public abstract Dictionary<string, string> RequestParams { get; }

    public abstract string? GetMarkup(string url, int maxWidth = 0, int maxHeight = 0);
    public virtual string GetEmbedProviderUrl(string url, int maxWidth, int maxHeight);
    public virtual string DownloadResponse(string url);
    public virtual T? GetJsonResponse<T>(string url) where T : class;
    public virtual XmlDocument GetXmlResponse(string url);
    public virtual string GetXmlProperty(XmlDocument doc, string property);
}

Adding a new OEmbed Provider Example

Let's allow our editors to embed artwork from the popular DeviantArt website - the world's largest online social community for artists and art enthusiasts. We can see they have information on using OEmbed: https://www.deviantart.com/developers/oembed. The format of their OEmbed implementation returns a JSON format, from a URL https://backend.deviantart.com/oembed?url=[urltoembed]. We'll need to use the OEmbedProviderBase and the base.GetJsonResponse method. We can see 'links' to media shared on DeviantArt are in the format: https://fav.me/[uniquemediaidentifier]. We'll need a regex to match any URLs pasted into the embed panel that start with fav.me, achieved by setting the UrlSchemeRegex property.

The Provider would look like this:

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Media.EmbedProviders;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Serialization;

namespace MyNamespace;

public class DeviantArtEmbedProvider : OEmbedProviderBase
{
    public DeviantArtEmbedProvider(IJsonSerializer jsonSerializer)
        : base(jsonSerializer)
    {
    }

    public override string ApiEndpoint => "https://backend.deviantart.com/oembed?url=";

    public override string[] UrlSchemeRegex => new[]
    {
        @"fav\.me/*",
        @"\w+\.deviantart.com\/\w+\/art\/*",
        @"\w+\.deviantart.com\/art\/*",
        @"sta\.sh/*",
        @"\w+\.deviantart.com\/\w+#\/d*"
    };

    public override Dictionary<string, string> RequestParams => new();

    public override string? GetMarkup(string url, int maxWidth = 0, int maxHeight = 0)
    {
        string requestUrl = base.GetEmbedProviderUrl(url, maxWidth, maxHeight);
        OEmbedResponse? oembed = base.GetJsonResponse<OEmbedResponse>(requestUrl);

        return oembed?.GetHtml();
    }
}

Register the provider with the EmbedProvidersCollection

Create a new C# class that implements IComposer and append your new provider to the EmbedProvidersCollection:

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Composing;

namespace MyNamespace;

public class RegisterEmbedProvidersComposer : IComposer
{
    public void Compose(IUmbracoBuilder builder)
        => builder.EmbedProviders().Append<DeviantArtEmbedProvider>();
}

The new provider should be available for editors to use:

Embedding a Media Item from DeviantArt website

Notice there isn't really any implementation written here. The regex maps the incoming URL to the provider. The base methods handle the complication of requesting from the third party API and turning the response into HTML.

Custom Embed Providers

If your third-party media provider lacks OEmbed support or requires custom HTML due to content quirks, implement GetMarkup() without using base helper methods.

Custom Embed Provider Example

Azure Media Services (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/media-services/) provide 'broadcast-quality' video streaming services. You can embed the Azure Media Player into your site to play a video using an IFrame.

You can create a custom EmbedProvider to embed an IFrame video player in your content. This can be done by taking the Media asset URL and writing out the required markup.

using System.Net;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Media.EmbedProviders;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Serialization;

namespace MyNamespace;

public class AzureVideoEmbedProvider : OEmbedProviderBase
{
    public AzureVideoEmbedProvider(IJsonSerializer jsonSerializer)
        : base(jsonSerializer)
    {
    }

    // no ApiEndpoint!
    public override string ApiEndpoint => string.Empty;
    
    public override string[] UrlSchemeRegex => new[]
    {
        @"windows\.net/*"
    };

    public override Dictionary<string, string> RequestParams => new();

    public override string? GetMarkup(string url, int maxWidth = 0, int maxHeight = 0)
    {
        // format of markup
        string videoFormat = "<div class=\"iplayer-container\"><iframe src=\"//aka.ms/ampembed?url={0}\" name=\"azuremediaplayer\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" align=\"center\" autoplay=\"false\" width=\"{1}\" height=\"{2}\" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>";

        // pass in encoded Url, with and height, and turn off autoplay...
        var videoPlayerMarkup = string.Format(videoFormat, WebUtility.UrlEncode(url) + "&amp;autoplay=false", maxWidth, maxHeight);

        return videoPlayerMarkup;
    }
}

Here the markup to embed has been manually constructed based upon the iframe video player, no request to an Api endpoint is made...

Register the Azure Embed Provider with the EmbedProvidersCollection

Create a new C# class that implements IComposer and add append your new provider to the EmbedProvidersCollection:

using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Composing;

namespace MyNamespace;

public class RegisterEmbedProvidersComposer : IComposer
{
    public void Compose(IUmbracoBuilder builder)
        => builder.EmbedProviders().Append<AzureVideoEmbedProvider>();
}

Now editors can embed Azure Media video Urls in the format: //amssamples.streaming.mediaservices.windows.net/3b970ae0-39d5-44bd-b3a3-3136143d6435/AzureMediaServicesPromo.ism/manifest.