10.0
  1. Services
    2. ›
  2. File Importing
    3. ›

The /s3/import Robot

We are happy to import from whatever storage solution suits you best.

The /s3/import Robot imports whole directories of files from your S3 bucket.

The /s3/import Robot imports whole directories of files from your S3 bucket.

Parameters

Name Type Default Description
use (required) String / Array of Strings / Object

General

Specifies which Step(s) to use as our input.

Special Step names

A special Step name is ":original", which provides user uploads handled by Transloadit. Outside of this restriction you can pick your own names.

Providing several Steps as input

You can add arrays to use several Steps: 
"use": [
  ":original",
  "encoded",
  "resized"
]
:bulb: That's likely all you need to know about use, but you can view advanced use cases:
› Advanced use cases

Step bundling

Some Robots can gather several Step results for a single invocation. For example, the /file/compress Robot would normally create one archive for each file passed to it. If you'd set bundle_steps to true, however, it will create one archive containing all the result files from all Steps you give it. To enable bundling, provide an object like the one below to the use parameter: 
"use": {
  "steps": [
    ":original",
    "encoded",
    "resized"
  ],
  "bundle_steps": true
}
This is also a crucial parameter for the /video/adaptive Robot, otherwise you'll generate 1 playlist for each viewing quality.
Keep in mind that all input Steps must be present in your Template. If one of them is missing (for instance it is rejected by a filter), no result is generated because the Robot waits indefinitely for all input Steps to be finished. Here's a demo that showcases Step bundling.

Group by original

Sticking with the /file/compress Robot example, you can set group_by_original to true, in order to create a separate archive for each of your uploaded or imported files, instead of creating one archive containing all originals (or one per resulting file). This is important for for the /media/playlist Robot where you'd typically set: 
"use": {
  "steps": [
    "segmented"
  ],
  "bundle_steps": true,
  "group_by_original": true
}

Fields

You can be more discriminatory by only using files that match a field name by setting the fields property. When this array is specified, the corresponding Step will only be executed for files submitted through one of the given field names, which correspond with the strings in the name attribute of the HTML file input field tag for instance. When using a back-end SDK, it corresponds with myFieldName1 in e.g.: $transloadit->addFile('myFieldName1', './chameleon.jpg'). This parameter is set to true by default, meaning all fields are accepted. Example: 
"use": {
  "steps": [ ":original" ],
  "fields": [ "myFieldName1" ]
}

Use As

Sometimes Robots take several inputs. For instance, the /video/merge Robot can create a slideshow from audio and images. You can map different Steps to the appropriate inputs. Example: 
"use": {
  "steps": [
    { "name": "audio_encoded", "as": "audio" },
    { "name": "images_resized", "as": "image" }
  ]
}
Sometimes the ordering is important, for instance, with our concat Robots. In these cases, you can add an index that starts at 1. You can also optionally filter by the multipart field name. Like in this example, where all files are coming from the same source (end-user uploads), but with different <input> names: Example: 
"use": {
  "steps": [
    { "name": ":original", "fields": "myFirstVideo", "as": "video_1" },
    { "name": ":original", "fields": "mySecondVideo", "as": "video_2" },
    { "name": ":original", "fields": "myThirdVideo", "as": "video_3" }
  ]
}
For times when it is not apparent where we should put the file, you can use Assembly Variables to be specific. For instance, you may want to pass a text file to the /image/resize Robot to burn the text in an image, but you are burning multiple texts, so where do we put the text file? We use specify it via ${use.text_1}, to indicate the first text file that was passed. Example: 
"watermarked": {
  "robot": "/image/resize",
  "use"  : {
    "steps": [
      { "name": "resized", as: "base" },
      { "name": "transcribed", as: "text" },
    ],
  },
  "text": [
    {
      "text"  : "Hi there",
      "valign": "top",
      "align" : "left",
    },
    {
      "text"    : "From the 'transcribed' Step: ${use.text_1}",
      "valign"  : "bottom",
      "align"   : "right",
      "x_offset": 16,
      "y_offset": -10,
    }
  ]
}
credentials (required) String Please create your associated Template Credentials in your Transloadit account and use the name of your Template Credentials as this parameter's value. They will contain the values for your S3 bucket, key, secret and bucket region. While we recommend to use Template Credentials at all times, some use cases demand dynamic credentials for which using Template Credentials with their static nature is too unwieldy. If you have this requirement, feel free to use the following parameters instead: "bucket", "bucket_region" (for example: "us-east-1" or "eu-west-2"), "key", "secret".
path (required) String / Array of Strings The path in your bucket to the specific file or directory. If the path points to a file, only this file will be imported. For example: js/my_javascript_file.js If it points to a directory, then all files from this directory will be imported. For example: js/ For Transloadit to recognize you want to import all files from a directory, make sure your path ends with a / slash. Directories are not imported recursively. If you want to import files from subfolders and sub-subfolders, please do this with another Robot Step. If you want to import all files from the root directory, please use / as the value here. In this case, make sure all your objects belong to a path. If you have objects in the root of your bucket that aren't prefixed with /, you'll receive an error: A client error (NoSuchKey) occurred when calling the GetObject operation: The specified key does not exist. You can also use an array of path strings here to import multiple paths in the same Robot Step.
recursive Boolean false Setting this true will enable importing files from subfolders and sub-subfolders, etc. of the given path. Please use the pagination parameters page_number and files_per_page wisely here.
page_number Integer 1 The pagination page number. To not break backwards compatibility in non-recursive imports, this for now only works when recursive is to true. When doing big imports, make sure no files are added or removed from other scripts within your path, otherwise you might get weird results with the pagination.
files_per_page Integer 1000 The pagination page size. this only works when recursive is true for now in order to not break backwards compatibility in non-recursive imports.
ignore_errors Array of Strings / Boolean [] Possible array members are "meta" and "import". There might be an error coming up when trying to extract metadata from your imported files. This happens for files that are zero bytes big for example. Including "meta" in the array will cause the Robot to not stop the import (and the entire Assembly) when that happens. Including "import" in the array will ensure the Robot does not error out on any import errors either. To keep backwards compatibility, setting this parameter to true will set it to ["meta", "import"] internally.
See full docs

Demos

Our /s3/import Robot can be used in combination with other Robots, to create powerful workflows unique to your use case. Here are a few example scenarios that you can try live on our website:

Pricing

Transloadit is a SaaS with a subscription model.

Just like with any File Importing Robot, you can use our /s3/import Robot free of charge.

Just like with your mobile plan, pricing goes down considerably when you commit to larger monthly volumes. You can adjust this every month. More info and available plans on our Pricing page.

Blog posts about the /s3/import Robot

We wrote the following posts about the /s3/import Robot on our blog: