JavaScript SDK

This page provides an in-depth introduction to the JavaScript SDK.

Overview

Cloudinary's JavaScript SDK provides simple, yet comprehensive image and video transformation, optimization, and delivery capabilities that you can implement using code that integrates seamlessly with your existing JavaScript or JS-based framework application.

Quick example

This example shows a transformation URL being created using the @cloudinary/url-gen package.

This code creates the HTML required to deliver the front_face.jpg image with the sepia effect applied.

You can apply more than one transformation at a time (see chained transformations) to give more interesting results:

• Crop to a 150x150 thumbnail using face-detection gravity to automatically determine the location for the crop
• Round the corners with a 20 pixel radius
• Apply a sepia effect
• Overlay the Cloudinary logo on the southeast corner of the image (with a slight offset). The logo is scaled down to a 50 pixel width, with increased brightness and partial transparency (opacity = 60%)
• Rotate the resulting image (including the overlay) by 10 degrees
• Convert and deliver the image in PNG format (the originally uploaded image was a JPG)

Get started with the JavaScript SDK

If you're using a frontend framework, jump straight to the relevant Get started docs:

• Get started with Angular
• Get started with React
• Get started with Vue.js

If you're using JavaScript without one of the above frameworks, follow the instructions in the next sections for installation and setup.

JavaScript SDK installation and configuration video tutorial

Watch this video tutorial to see how to install and configure the JavaScript SDK:

Installation

Install the @cloudinary/url-gen package using the NPM package manager:

Configuration

You can specify the configuration parameters that are used to create the delivery URLs, either using a Cloudinary instance or per image/video instance.

Cloudinary instance configuration

If you want to use the same configuration to deliver all your media assets, it's best to set up the configuration through a Cloudinary instance, for example:

You can set other configuration parameters related to your cloud and URL as required, for example, if you have your own custom delivery hostname, and want to generate a secure URL (HTTPS):

Asset instance configuration

If you need to specify different configurations to deliver your media assets, you can specify the configuration per image/video instance, for example:

Build environments

Some build environments require additional configuration:

• Rollup + Vanilla JS: install and use @rollup/node-resolve.
• Next.js + Vanilla JS: install and use moxystudio/next-compile-node-modules (or some other similar solution).
• TypeScript + Webpack: set "moduleResolution": "node" in the TSConfig file.

Transformations

The @cloudinary/url-gen package simplifies the generation of transformation URLs, and includes special components and directives for easy embedding of assets in your JavaScript application.

The @cloudinary/url-gen package installs an additional transformation-builder-sdk library as a dependency, which handles the transformation generation part of the URL.

You can use the Transformation Builder reference to find all available transformations, syntax and examples.

To find out more about transforming your assets using the @cloudinary/url-gen package, see:

• JavaScript image transformations
• JavaScript video transformations

Plugins

The @cloudinary/html package from frontend-frameworks provides plugins to render the media on your site in the optimal way and improve your user's experience by automating media tasks like lazy loading, responsive images and more.

Sample projects

Take a look at the JavaScript sample projects page to help you get started integrating Cloudinary into your JavaScript application.