Wordpress - Copy media library or categorize?

Question

I have a plugin in mind for Wordpress (that I'm aiming to create) that bascially are going to use the same features of the media - library (uploading / viewing / setting descriptions etc on images).

Is there a way of "copying" the media library and then use it/modifiy it as you wish?

Background: I want to categories these photos for different customers (that the owner of the site uploads). I believe the built-in media library should be used for site-specific photos (like logos, product photos etc). I don't want mix built-in "media-library" with specific customers photos.

Guidelines Maybe there's a better approach. (Is it better to create categories in the media-categories for each customer?) If there is, please tell me. I'm looking for guidelines - not a solution.

Answer 1

Solution 1: First query posts, and then for each one of them use something like this code:

$images = get_children( array(
    'post_parent'    => get_the_ID(),
    'post_type'      => 'attachment',
    'post_mime_type' => 'image',
    'numberposts'    => -1
    ) );
foreach ( (array) $images as $image ) {
    print wp_get_attachment_url( $image->ID );
}

I don't like this solution because it will generate many SQL queries.

Solution 2: Write your own SQL query which will select all images at once. It should look something like this:

// change this to your custom post type, attachment in your case.
$post_type = 'attachment';

    global $wpdb;
    $where = get_posts_by_author_sql( $post_type );
    $query = "SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts p where p.post_type = 'attachment' AND (p.post_mime_type LIKE 'image/%')  AND (p.post_status = 'inherit') AND p.post_parent IN (SELECT $wpdb->posts.ID FROM $wpdb->posts  {$where} ) ORDER BY p.post_date DESC";
    $results =  $wpdb->get_results( $query );

    if ( $results ) {

      foreach ( (array) $results as $image ) {
        print wp_get_attachment_url( $image->ID );
      }
    }

The way I would build that plugin, is creating a custom post type, similar to the media upload type, and then modify it as you wish (adding a category for example).

I like the idea of the plugin, so let me you know then you finish, Good luck.

Edit: If you are actually want to copy all the image files to another directory you could do something like this using :

$source = wp_upload_dir(); // get WordPress upload directory
$dest= "wp-content/My-new-Directory"; // where you would like to copy

mkdir($dest, 0755);
foreach (
 $iterator = new \RecursiveIteratorIterator(
  new \RecursiveDirectoryIterator($source, \RecursiveDirectoryIterator::SKIP_DOTS),
  \RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST) as $item
) {
  if ($item->isDir()) {
    mkdir($dest . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $iterator->getSubPathName());
  } else {
    copy($item, $dest . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $iterator->getSubPathName());
  }
}