Separate Upload Folders Per Tenant In Multi-Tenant Setup

[bruceparish]

From what I've been able to do currently, I can setup multi-tenancy using the plugin and I can also setup uploads with a prefix. However, that prefix appears to only be a static string and can't be dynamic based on who or what tenant is doing the uploading.

I was able to adjust the filename using the custom filename hook outlined in the documentation, but that only allows you to dynamically set the filename but not a folder. Allowing to setup a folder in a hook or allowing the prefix to accept a function would allow me to setup in my storage provider a separate folder per tenant for better organization and could allow some interesting CDN use cases as well as being able to more easily audit high traffic assets by tenant.

My current solution is to adjust the filename in the hook mentioned above and prefix the filename with the uuid of the tenant, but ideally id have a folder with that uuid rather than part of the filename. Specifically, I've been using S3 which I realize doesn't have real folders, but does allow for virtual foldering and any attempt at setting a folder as a part of the filename gets sanitized.

Thanks for consideration.

[dsod]

Ran into this today as well and I am also using the AWS S3 bucket adapter. After reviewing the adapter plugin code I came to the following solution:

import { getTenantFromCookie } from '@payloadcms/plugin-multi-tenant/utilities'

// My upload-enabled collection config:
const Assets = {
  ...
  fields: [
    ...
    {
      name: 'prefix',
      type: 'text',
      admin: {
        hidden: true,
        readOnly: true
      }
    }
  ],
  hooks: {
    beforeOperation: [
      ({ req, operation, args }) => {
        if ((operation === 'create' || operation === 'update') && req.file) {
          const tenantId =
            args.data.tenant ||
            getTenantFromCookie(req.headers, 'text') ||
            (typeof req.user?.tenant === 'string' ? req.user?.tenant : req.user?.tenant?.id)
          if (!tenantId) {
            throw new Error('Tenant ID not found when attempting to upload a file')
          }
          args.data.prefix = tenantId
          return args
        }
      },
    ],
  }
}

Relevant parts of the code:

• args.data.prefix is joined together with the filename to create a file path: https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/blob/main/packages/storage-s3/src/handleUpload.ts#L26
• getFilePrefix is used in the getHandler that is used to retrieve files from storage. It will use the prefix stored on the document, if none is configured: https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/blob/main/packages/plugin-cloud-storage/src/utilities/getFilePrefix.ts#L26-L44

Could perhaps make it work without the custom prefix field by defining a prefix in the plugin collection config, and then implementing the same beforeOperation hook above (it would override the defaultValue configured by the plugin here https://github.com/payloadcms/payload/blob/main/packages/plugin-cloud-storage/src/fields/getFields.ts#L135-L155)

[junwen-k]

I'm running into an issue when using the GCS storage plugin with clientUploads: true and dynamic prefixes set via a beforeOperation hook, following the media-with-dynamic-prefix example. While this works for server-side uploads perfectly, I'm seeing unexpected behavior when uploading files with client uploads enabled.

Current Behavior

When uploading files through the admin portal, files are uploaded twice to different locations:

1. /my-collection/file.jpg - from client upload (using static prefix from plugin config)
2. /my-collection/123/file.jpg - from server upload (using dynamic prefix from beforeOperation hook)

Configuration

// payload.config.ts
gcsStorage({
  clientUploads: true,
  collections: {
    'my-collection': {
      prefix: 'my-collection', // Static prefix
    },
  },
})

// Collection config
hooks: {
  beforeOperation: [
    ({ args, operation }) => {
      if (operation === 'create') {
        return {
          ...args,
          data: {
            ...args.data,
            prefix: `my-collection/${args.data.folder}`, // Dynamic prefix
          },
        }
      }
    },
  ],
}

What I'm Seeing

The duplicate upload appears to happen because:

1. Client upload path: The signed URL generation endpoint (generateSignedURL.ts#L42) uses the static prefix from the plugin config at the time of URL generation. Since this happens before the document is created, the beforeOperation hook hasn't run yet to set the dynamic prefix.

2. Server upload path: The beforeChange hook (beforeChange.ts#L46) calls adapter.handleUpload() which uploads the file again, this time with the correct dynamic prefix from data.prefix.

Potential Approaches

I'm not entirely sure what the right solution is here, but a few ideas:

• Perhaps the signed URL generation could somehow be aware of dynamic prefixes? Maybe by accepting the prefix as part of the request?
• Or perhaps there's a way to pass the dynamic prefix through the upload handler chain that I'm missing?

I'm curious if there's a recommended pattern for this use case, or if client uploads simply aren't compatible with dynamic prefixes.

Current Workaround

For now, I can work around this in my custom app by encoding the folder path directly in the filename when generating the signed URL (/:folderId/filename), but this doesn't work for admin portal uploads and will result in inconsistency.