Based on a special controlled-NOT gate, a multi-photon state encoded in polarizations of photons could be transformed into the corresponding single photon qudit encoded in spatial mode. It will make the processing on multi-photon change into the operation on a single-photon, if the inverse transformation from a single photon qudit back to a multi-photon state could be realized also. Associated with linear optical multi-port interferometer for single-photon unitary operation, the positive-operator value measurement and the universal unitary operation for multi-photon state are realized. This approach is more efficient than the previous one with decomposition into two-qubit gates in the circuit-based quantum computation, and it is feasible with using the current experimental technology.