Insert from URL missing when adding an image

[karmatosed]

This functionality is missing, whilst it may just not be implemented yet, it would be great to at least track that it doesn't get missed out.

[karmatosed]

A user also brought this up themselves testing:

"Is it not possible to get an image via an url? If so, I could not find a way to do it."

[westonruter]

Yeah, there probably needs to be a URL input field that appears in the placeholder, so somewhat of a combination of the current Image placeholder and the Embed placeholder:

But, with that in place, should a user be able to say, replace an image inserted via URL to then be an image from the media library? And vice versa, should an image added from the media library be able to be replaced with an external image URL without having to replace the entire block? We can do this in the Image widget since the media modal has the two tabs for selecting from the media library and selecting via URL:

[imath]

Hi,

I've been thinking about this lately. And i'm wondering if creating a specific core/media-url would be a better idea for Gutenberg. Because some users might also need to add external urls for Video and Audio.

Into the classic editor, It's possible to paste an external url to an image of course, but it's also possible to paste an external url to a video or an audio file. Once pasted, the image tag, video tag or audio tag are output into this editor.

So here's what came to my mind about it:

1. The new core/media-url could show an url input and output the image/video/audio tags according to the file extension on form submit.
2. The "Transform into:" button of this new block could show the core/image if it's an external image, the core/audio if it's an external audio, etc..
3. If "Transform into:" is clicked the external media could be media_handle_sideload()-ed and added to the WP Media Library.
4. As the contributor role shouldn't be able to upload_files ("upload_files" capability and Image relative blocks #3672) this new block could be used instead of the blocks needing the upload_files capability.
5. It would avoid editing the core/image, core/audio, core/video blocks to add a similar code to let them deal with external urls.