Top 5 tips to maximize your Transloadit experience
We understand that Transloadit can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around. Our wide array of features and parameters can make it daunting to know where to start – let alone how to optimize your workflow. To help get you on your way, we've put together a list of five things you can do to get the most out of Transloadit.
1. Use Templates
While it may be tempting to keep your Assembly Instructions close to your integration (and it's often a valid use case), we nevertheless recommend that you use Templates.
Templates are encrypted, and stored safely on our servers, meaning you only have to worry about referencing the Template ID from where you're calling Transloadit. If your Assembly Instructions contain credentials for one of the third-party services we integrate with, then Templates can help alleviate the worry of malicious users gaining access to your file storage.
And in case you're now wondering how this would affect your ability to pass data to your
Assembly, or change the function of your Template on the fly – it's actually
possible to
override any parameter in your Template.
Simply include the JSON for the Step and parameter you're changing as parts of the
steps property.
You can make the switch to Templates here!
2. Go async
On the rare occasion that we are experiencing encoding queues, we don't want your end users to feel the brunt of this. The last thing that users want to do is wait – and that's why we provide you with the option to use Transloadit asynchronously.
Specifying a URL in the notify_url parameter means we'll send you a POST request as soon as your
Assembly finishes. Configure your SDK not to wait for encoding
so your users can continue as soon as the file upload is finished.
If for whatever reason your back end is unavailable to process the request, we'll retry sending the notification up to five times to give your servers a chance to come back online and handle the request.
See our webhook guide for a complete implementation, including how to verify notification signatures before processing results.
3. Set a bill limit!
Unless you tell us otherwise, Transloadit will always continue to serve you – even if your encoding jobs take you past the monthly GB allowance included in your plan. After all, we don't want your users to suddenly see your service stop working if you're experiencing a particularly busy day.
At the same time, as all programmers are aware, software contains bugs. And sometimes, a bug like that could result in, say, Assemblies being run multiple times more than they should be running, incurring unnecessary costs to your account.
To prevent this from happening, we recommend setting a bill limit on your account. Set it high enough to cover your expected usage, and low enough to avoid any accidental overages.
You can set a bill limit by heading to the billing section on your account, and clicking the "Set bill limit" button.
4. Secure your requests
When using Uppy, your auth_key may be included as part of your website's source code. Anyone can
look at the source of your website by simply clicking "Inspect Element", therefore meaning they
could theoretically run Assemblies from your Transloadit account - charging you for usage
that isn't yours.
Fortunately, you can protect yourself by enabling
Signature Authentication on your account. This forces
you to generate a signature for each request you make to Transloadit. Generate it on your back end
using your auth_secret and the exact serialized params, which include your auth_key and an
expiration time. When creating an Assembly, send it in the multipart signature field alongside
params. Keep the Auth Secret on your server.
For examples, see our Signature Authentication guide.
5. Leverage our SDKs
Last but certainly not least, is one of the most important tools at your disposal to get the most out of Transloadit: use our SDKs! They often come jam-packed with features that help streamline the integration process, including some of the features that we've mentioned above.
If you can't find the SDK you're looking for among our official integrations, there are also a number of integrations built and maintained by our community. Check them out here.
That's all from us for today. If you have any questions, or want to share your own tips and tricks, feel free to reach out to us on Twitter!