# Creating Image Blocks programmatically
**URL:** https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204
**Category:** Questions
**Tags:** v3
**Created:** [December 9, 2021, 7:48pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204 "2021-12-09T19:48:50Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gerricom](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/gerricom)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2021, 7:48pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204/1 "2021-12-09T19:48:50Z")
Moin everybody!
I’m trying to convert a rather old kirby page to a new version with blocks instead of kirbytext fields. As the most pages are not that complex, I’m using `Blocks::parse()` for that. This works good except with images.
`parse` is creating image blocks but obviously referecing them with a web location an with the mediaUrl.
So I thought of just rewriting that block to a kirby location but I’m not getting behind this. My last approach was rather “harsh” because I thought there might be some problems when using `update()` on a blocks content but… it’s not working that way:
```auto
$block = $oldBlock->toArray();
if ($block['type'] == 'image') {
$url = explode('/', $block['content']['src']);
$block['content']['location'] = 'kirby';
$block['content']['image'] = [A::last($url)];
$block['content']['src'] = '';
}
$modifiedBlocks->add(Block::factory([
'content' => $block['content'],
'type' => $block['type'],
]));
```
Are there any caveats when creating a image block programmatically? How should I reference an image when doing so?
Thanks!
Markus
---
### Author:  [@texnixe](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/texnixe)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2021, 8:59pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204/2 "2021-12-09T20:59:02Z")
An image block looks basically like this:
```auto
$image = new Kirby\Cms\Block([
'content' => [
'location' => 'kirby',
'image' => [
"dark-forest.jpg"
],
],
'type' => 'image',
]);
```
```auto
$blocks = $page->text()->toBlocks();
$blocks = $blocks->add(new Kirby\Cms\Blocks([$image]));
$kirby->impersonate('kirby');
$page->update([
'text' => json_encode($blocks->toArray()),
]);
```
---
### Author:  [@gerricom](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/gerricom)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2021, 1:17pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204/3 "2021-12-10T13:17:05Z")
Thanks, Sonja!
I fed the `$page->update()` with the blocks collection because I thought Kirby would handle this directly. I now converted the collection to an array, did an json\_encode and now every works like it should.
---
### Author:  [@texnixe](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/texnixe)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2021, 1:23pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204/4 "2021-12-10T13:23:12Z")
Yes, the strange thing is that I wrote a recipe that works with just the blocks in the past, as if something changed in the meantime. Have to check this and adapt the recipe if necessary.
---
### Author:  [@jbidoret](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/jbidoret)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2022, 9:20pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204/5 "2022-01-03T21:20:36Z")
Hi.
Indeed, the [recipe](https://getkirby.com/docs/cookbook/templating/update-blocks-programmatically) did’nt mentionned the `json_encode($blocks->toArray())`, which seem necessary. Thanks !
---
### Author:  [@texnixe](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/texnixe)
#### Post date: [January 3, 2022, 9:56pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/creating-image-blocks-programmatically/24204/6 "2022-01-03T21:56:45Z")
Ok, I finally got round to dumping the recipe code into a Starterkit and it worked like advertised without me having to `json_encode()` the blocks.
Hm, the problem seems to be that it stops working when trying to add image to the mix.
I fixed the recipe.