XF 2.2 GIPHY integration, image proxy bypass and audio uploads

GIPHYBrandGuide.jpgHave you been sitting there thinking "I just wish XenForo 2.2 had a little bit more awesome"? Yeah so did we. So here's a few extra features that we're introducing in XenForo 2.2 Beta 2.

Noice Thats Nice GIF

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GIPHY integration​

Everybody loves GIFs, right? Well, maybe not everybody but personally we love them... ok ok... maybe it's just @Chris D that loves them. Every day is a GIF (with a hard G) day for Chris.

excited happy birthday GIF
happy dance GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants
carlton dance GIF

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So in XF 2.2 Beta 2 we're introducing GIPHY support. It can be enabled from this option in your Admin control panel by populating it with an API key you can obtain from GIPHY.

xenforo.com_community_admin.php_options_groups_messageOptions_.png

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Once enabled, we add a handy new GIF button to the rich text editor. When you click the button you will get a list of the latest trending GIFs. But you can also search. As you scroll through the list of GIFs we automatically load more results in. We have an element of lazy loading here too whereby there is initially a still thumbnail version of the GIF loaded in first until just before the GIF scrolls into view then we load the animated version in.


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That feeling when you find the perfect GIF:

Male GIF

But... wait... most of you have the image proxy enabled, right? Won't all these GIFs be cached locally and use up your precious disk space?

married with children wow GIF

Well, not necessarily...

Image proxy bypass​

For the most part, the image proxy is most useful for its ability to ensure that content served from non-HTTPS sites do not generate "insecure content warnings" when they are loaded on your (hopefully) HTTPS secured site.

Or, such as the GIPHY example above, you may simply want to avoid caching images from specific sites due to concerns about the disk space required or concerns that they may exceed the image proxy limits.

So we're also adding an option to bypass the image proxy either for all HTTPS-requests - where the effects of proxying are somewhat mooted - or specific domains.

proxy_bypass_01.png

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If you choose to bypass specific domains, any domain - and its subdomains - will be bypassed. If you need a bit more control, you can write the domain as a regular expression.

Season 4 Wow GIF by The Office

Audio uploads​

In XF 2.1 we added video upload support and so it seems only reasonable that we should consider adding audio upload support at some point.

It might just be a small coincidence that it helps us solve a little issue arising from the fact that XFMG supports audio uploads and our attachment mirroring feature was struggling to mirror audio attachments from the attachment system into the media gallery.

Coincidence Reaction GIF

If you already have video uploads enabled you do not have to do anything extra. Rather than adding extra options and permissions we made it so that the options and permissions related to video uploading now also include audio attachments by default.

Whatever sounds you decide to upload to your forum, we hope you enjoy this new feature. Here's a montage of some of our favourite sounds:



lionel richie hello GIF

Speaking of favourites, why don't you give the new GIPHY integration a whirl and post your favourite GIFs below!

Thats Nice Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
 
Click to expand...
regarding audio uploads

Audio uploads uses the same system of video uploads but video uploads have a dedicated "Insert video" drag and drop feature while .mp3 uploads uses the attachment feature with a browser file picker prompt. When uploading a .mp3 file with the attachments feature, after upload it presents an "Insert" button that embeds the mp3 into the posts. Okay everything good.

I figure since audio uploads are using the attachments feature I can just add the .m4a extension, in the 'Allowed attachment file extensions' settings, for aac encoded audio which is the web's most used audio coding on streaming sites. And after adding the extension to the settings indeed I can upload the file but there's no "Insert" button to easily embed the file to the post.

So if it's going to use attachments why not provide an "Insert" button after upload for other audio file types using the attachments feature or make audio uploads use the same "Insert video" drag and drop feature?

Right now audio uploads seem to be in an in-between of both upload methods. An "Insert video/audio"combined drag and drop feature would be a more even experience. Or if it must continue using the attachments feature make other user-added extensions also able to be inserted. As is right now, no insert button after upload users won't know how to embed limiting me as an admin from providing these other extensions as they will be confused. And now a days who knows what web streamable audio formats users will be uploading as many apps use many different formats, we as admins can't expect for all their audios to be in mp3 format.

2¢
 
I strongly suspect it will be on GIPHY somewhere.

We've no plans to introduce additional providers for GIFs at this point.
 
I assume you should be able to upload it to giphy? Though not sure how it works out WRT copyrights. It is kind of sad that Facebook is buying giphy and google already owns tenor. An independent platform would have been nice. Maybe some day imgur would launch an alternative platform that can be used.
 
Noice Split Depth GIF by moodman


Also, I'm kinda new to this, but was just wondering with new updates being released for Xenforo, could there be a chance where somehow the Giphy access could break with a new update?

manicomio said:
Crap, I didn't know FB owned Giphy.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they acquired it recently and merged it with Instagram. (I mean Facebook always relied on the Giphy API to link GIFS, now they just a leg up, that way if the API ever breaks, they still own the company, and can do direct links to the GIFS)
 
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It is possible but services with popular APIs seldom change them in a totally breaking way and we'd keep on top of any changes.
 
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