Importing Assets

Assets can be imported programmatically and then used within other content. To achieve this, you first need:

  1. A script that includes the Perch runtime (which could be a master page)
  2. One or more assets (such as image files) on the web server, but not yet in a resource bucket

Getting started

In your script, include the Perch runtime. If you’re using a Runway master page, you can skip this, just set up the master page and point a route to it.


Create an instance of the API, and a new AssetImporter.

$API      = new PerchAPI(1.0, 'my_importer');
$Importer = $API->get('AssetImporter');


At this point you want to loop through your assets and add the items one at a time. The add_item() method will copy the file into your resource bucket and return you an array of details including its id. You’ll want to keep this ID if you want to use the asset as part of another content import.

It’s best to use a try/catch block:

try {
    $result = $Importer->add_item([
            'type'   => 'image',
            'bucket' => 'default',
            'path'   => __DIR__.'/images/0C7A1073.jpg',
} catch (Exception $e) {
    die('Error: '.$e->getMessage());

If you were to print_r the $result you’d have something like:

    [_default] => /perch/resources/0c7a1073-7.jpg
    [path] => 0c7a1073-7.jpg
    [size] => 7815378
    [bucket] => default
    [w] => 4096
    [h] => 2731
    [mime] => image/jpeg
    [sizes] => Array
            [thumb] => Array
                    [w] => 150
                    [h] => 100
                    [target_w] => 150
                    [target_h] => 150
                    [density] => 2
                    [path] => 0c7a1073-7-thumb@2x.jpg
                    [size] => 28426
                    [mime] => image/jpeg


    [id] => 630

Our asset ID is 630 in this case.

Using the asset

To use an asset with other content, you need to provide the asset ID. To do this, you specify the ID of the asset field in your template, appending _assetID to the name.

So to use asset 630 with a field called image in a collection item, we’d use:

        'title'         => 'Breaking news!',
        'body'          => 'Some **exciting news** has _just_ broken...',
        'slug'          => 'breaking-news',
        'date'          => '2012-04-28 12:23:09',
        'category'      => ['articles/news', 'articles/flippin-exciting'],
        'image_assetID' => 630,