gatsby-transformer-cloudinary

Transform local files into Cloudinary-managed assets for Gatsby sites.

Usage no npm install needed!

<script type="module">
  import gatsbyTransformerCloudinary from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/gatsby-transformer-cloudinary';
</script>

README

gatsby-transformer-cloudinary

Provides three ways to use Cloudinary with Gatsby: 1) Upload images in File nodes to Cloudinary. 2) Upload remote images by their URL to Cloudinary. 3) Create nodes for images that have already been uploaded to Cloudinary.

Each of the three methods above create CloudinaryAsset nodes compatible with gatsby-image.

You’ll need a Cloudinary account to use this plugin. They have a generous free tier, so for most of us this will stay free for quite a while.

Live demo (source)

DISCLAIMER: If you try running this demo's source code on your own computer, you might face issues as the demo uses assets and transformations from the author’s Cloudinary account. Before running, please remove them or replace them with images and transformations from your own Cloudinary account.

Features

  • Upload local project media assets to a secure remote CDN
  • Upload remote media assets to a secure remote CDN
  • Utilize media assets on Cloudinary in gatsby-image
  • Use gatsby-image fluid and fixed formats on Cloudinary assets
  • Retrieve media files in optimized formats with responsive breakpoints
  • Utilize all Cloudinary transformations including chained transformations in gatsby's data layer

Example usage

Here's the plugin in action to fetch a fixed asset using the useStaticQuery API of gatsby:

import React from 'react';
import { graphql, useStaticQuery } from 'gatsby';
import Image from 'gatsby-image';

export default () => {
  const data = useStaticQuery(graphql`
    query {
      file(name: { eq: "marketplace-banner" }) {
        childCloudinaryAsset {
          fixed {
            ...CloudinaryAssetFixed
          }
        }
      }
    }
  `);

  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Here goes something</h2>
      <Image fixed={data.file.childCloudinaryAsset.fixed} alt="banner" />
    </div>
  );
};

Installation

This transformer automatically creates childCloudinaryAsset nodes for File nodes created by gatsby-source-filesystem.

This transformer also allows you to pass URLs directly to Cloudinary to side-step the need to first download files to your development machine. This can be achieved by calling the createRemoteImageNode function from an onCreateNode function.

Install the plugins using either npm or yarn.

npm install --save gatsby-transformer-cloudinary gatsby-source-filesystem

yarn add gatsby-transformer-cloudinary gatsby-source-filesystem

How to use

Set up environment variables

Add the data that shouldn’t be committed to Git into .env.development:

# Find these values at https://cloudinary.com/console/
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=<your cloud name>
CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=<your API key>
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=<your API secret>

NOTE: you’ll also need to set these environment variables in your build system (i.e. Netlify).

Configure the plugin

In your gatsby-config.js, point gatsby-source-filesystem to images in your app, then set up gatsby-transformer-cloudinary with your credentials.

// Load the environment variables.
require('dotenv').config({
  path: `.env.${process.env.NODE_ENV}`,
});

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: `gatsby-source-filesystem`,
      options: {
        name: `images`,
        path: `${__dirname}/src/images`,
      },
    },
    {
      resolve: 'gatsby-transformer-cloudinary',
      options: {
        cloudName: process.env.CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME,
        apiKey: process.env.CLOUDINARY_API_KEY,
        apiSecret: process.env.CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET,
        uploadFolder: 'gatsby-cloudinary',
      },
    },
  ],
};

Upload remote images

To directly upload images to Cloudinary from remote sources, you can use the createRemoteImageNode function:

// gatsby-node.js
import { createRemoteImageNode } from 'gatsby-transformer-cloudinary';

// This example assumes "post" nodes are created in a `sourceNodes` function.
const POST_NODE_TYPE = 'post';

export async function onCreateNode({
  node,
  actions: { createNode },
  createNodeId,
  createContentDigest,
  reporter,
}) {
  // In this example, "post" nodes sometimes have a "cover_photo_url" that's a link to an image.
  if (node.internal.type === POST_NODE_TYPE && node.cover_photo_url) {
    await createRemoteImageNode({
      url: node.cover_photo_url,
      parentNode: node,
      relationshipName: 'coverPhoto',
      createNode,
      createNodeId,
      createContentDigest,
      reporter,
    });
  }
}

Use images already on Cloudinary

To create GraphQL nodes for images that are already uploaded to Cloudinary, you need to create nodes containing data that describe the images on Cloudinary. For example, you might have a post node that has a cover photo stored on Cloudinary. The data in the post node should look something like...

{
  title: "How to beat the pandemic blues",
  publishedAt: "2020-07-26T21:55:13.358Z",
  coverPhoto: {
    cloudinaryAssetData: true,
    cloudName: "my-amazing-blog",
    publicId: "blue-blue-blue",
    originalHeight: 360,
    originalWidth: 820,
    defaultBase64: "data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAYAAAAfFcSJAAAADUlEQVR42mMMXG/8HwAEwAI0Bj1bnwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==",
    defaultTracedSVG: "data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20height%3D%229999%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%209999%209999%22%20width%3D%229999%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22m0%200h9999v9999h-9999z%22%20fill%3D%22%23f9fafb%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E",
  }
}

The coverPhoto property in the node above will be deleted and replaced by gatsby-transformer-cloudinary with a CloudinaryAsset node that can be used with gatsby-image. This transformation will be done for any top-level properties of nodes that have cloudinaryAssetData: true, and values cloudName, publicId, originalHeight, and originalWidth properties. The top-level property name, coverPhoto in the example above, will be the name of the relationship between the parent node and the CloudinaryAsset node that will be created.

The property defaultBase64 in the node above can be used by your CMS/backend API to provide precomputed or cached base64 URIs for your images. The provided string must comply with RFC 2397. This base64 image will be used unless ignoreDefaultBase64: true is set in your GraphQL query. In cases where you prefer to have an accurate base64 image with the same transformations applied as you full-size image, you should use ignoreDefaultBase64: true in your GraphQL query. When a defaultBase64 property is not supplied or ignoreDefaultBase64 is true, an API call to Cloudinary will be made when resolving your GraphQL queries to fetch the base64 image.

When providing defaultBase64 properties, it's recommended that you set the plugin option alwaysUseDefaultBase64 to true in development. This may result in your base64 images looking different in development and production, but it will also result in much faster development build times as fewer API calls to Cloudinary will be made. The alwaysUseDefaultBase64 plugin option overrides the ignoreDefaultBase64 GraphQL query parameter and forces gatsby-transformer-cloudinary to always use defaultBase64 images when they are provided.

No API calls to Cloudinary for base64 images will be made if your GraphQL queries do not request base64 images.

The property defaultTracedSVG in the node above can be used by your CMS/backend to provide precomputed or cached SVG placeholders for your images. The provided string must comply with RFC 2397. It should also be encoded with something like JavaScript's encodeURIComponent().

Plugin options

In gatsby-config.js the plugin accepts the following options:

option type required default value description
cloudName String false n/a Cloud name of your Cloudinary account, can be obtained from your Cloudinary console. This should be stored and retrieved as an environment variable.
apiKey String false n/a API Key of your Cloudinary account, can be obtained from your Cloudinary console. This should be stored and retrieved as an environment variable.
apiSecret String false n/a API Secret of your Cloudinary account, can be obtained from your Cloudinary console. This should be stored and retrieved as an environment variable.
uploadFolder String false n/a An optional folder name where the uploaded assets will be stored on Cloudinary.
fluidMaxWidth Int false 1000 The maximum width needed for an image. If specifying a width bigger than the original image, the width of the original image is used instead. Used when calculating breakpoints.
fluidMinWidth Int false 200 The minimum width needed for an image. Used when calculating breakpoints.
createDerived Boolean false true If true, create and keep the derived images of the selected breakpoints during the API call. If false, images generated during the analysis process are thrown away. This option is ignored if useCloudinaryBreakpoints is false. It's recommended that you enable createDerived if useCloudinaryBreakpoints is true to store the breakpoint images and prevent them from being recalculated on every build.
breakpointsMaxImages Integer false 5 Set maximum number of responsive breakpoint images generated and returned on image upload. If useCloudinaryBreakpoints is false, then exactly breakpointsMaxImages breakpoints will be created.
useCloudinaryBreakpoints Boolean false false If true, then Cloudinary will be requested to automatically find the best breakpoints for each image. It's recommended that this option be set to false in development because this option uses one Cloudinary transformation for every image uploaded to Cloudinary plus one transformation for every derived image created while calculating breakpoints.
overwriteExisting Boolean false false Whether to overwrite existing assets with the same public ID. When set to false, return immediately if an asset with the same Public ID was found. It's recommended that this is set to false in development as each image overwrite costs one Cloudinary transformation.
enableDefaultTransformations Boolean false false true will add the q_auto and f_auto transformations to images for quality and format optimizations.
alwaysUseDefaultBase64 Boolean false false When alwaysUseDefaultBase64 is true, gatsby-transformer-cloudinary will always use defaultBase64 images when they are provided to the GraphQL layer. It's recommended that you set alwaysUseDefaultBase64 to true in your development environment and provide defaultBase64 properties for any images already uploaded to Cloudinary. Doing so will result in faster and cheaper builds because no Cloudinary API calls will need to be made when resolving your GraphQL queries.

The options cloudName, apiKey, and apiSecret are required if any images will be uploaded to Cloudinary during the build process. If you're solely using images already uploaded to Cloudinary, then these options can be safely omitted.

Note: Each derived image created for a breakpoint will consume one Cloudinary transformation. Enable the useCloudinaryBreakpoints option with care. If the createDerived option is enabled, transformations will only be consumed when the images are first created. However, created images will consume Cloudinary storage space. If overwriteExisting is enabled, each image that you upload will consume one transformation each time your Gatsby cache gets cleared and the image gets re-uploaded. For this reason, it's recommended that you keep overWriteExisting disabled and instead set the overwriteExisting parameter of createRemoteImageNode on a per-image basis when you know that an image has actually been updated.

Query for images

Assuming you have an image called “avatar.jpg” in your src/images/ directory, you can use it in a component like this:

import React from 'react';
import { graphql, useStaticQuery } from 'gatsby';
import Image from 'gatsby-image';

export default () => {
  const data = useStaticQuery(graphql`
    query {
      file(name: { eq: "avatar" }) {
        childCloudinaryAsset {
          fluid {
            ...CloudinaryAssetFluid
          }
        }
      }
    }
  `);

  return <Image fluid={data.file.childCloudinaryAsset.fluid} alt="avatar" />;
};

Fragments

The fragments below can be used when querying your Cloudinary assets:

  • CloudinaryAssetFluid
  • CloudinaryAssetFluid_noBase64
  • CloudinaryAssetFluid_tracedSVG
  • CloudinaryAssetFixed
  • CloudinaryAssetFixed_noBase64
  • CloudinaryAssetFixed_tracedSVG

Avoiding stretched images using the fluid type

As mentioned previously, images using the fluid type are stretched to match the container’s width and height. In the case where the image’s width or height is smaller than the available viewport, the image will stretch to match the container, potentially leading to unwanted problems and worsened image quality.

The CloudinaryAssetFluidLimitPresentationSize fragment can be used to to gatsby-image not to stretch an image larger than its maximum dimensions regardless of the size of its container:

query {
  file(name: { eq: "avatar" }) {
    childCloudinaryAsset {
      fluid {
        ...CloudinaryAssetFluid
        ...CloudinaryAssetFluidLimitPresentationSize
      }
    }
  }
}

Manual Usage

It’s also possible to manually create gatsby-image-friendly fixed and fluid objects by importing helper functions from the transformer.

This is an advanced use case — if possible, try not to do this when Gatsby’s data layer is an option. This is intended for cases where assets are already on Cloudinary and moving them to the Gatsby project would be too time-intensive to be reasonable.

NOTE: This approach is async, which means you’ll end up with content jumping unless you manually account for the image area. You’ve been warned.

Manually creating fluid images

import React from 'react';
import Image from 'gatsby-image';
import { getFluidImageObject } from 'gatsby-transformer-cloudinary/api';

export default () => {
  const [fluid, setFluid] = useState(undefined);

  useEffect(() => {
    getFluidImageObject({
      public_id: 'gatsby-cloudinary/jason',
      cloudName: 'jlengstorf',
      originalHeight: 3024,
      originalWidth: 4032,
      breakpoints: [200, 400, 600, 800],
      transformations: ['ar_16:10', 'c_fill'],
      chained: ['e_grayscale,e_tint:100:663399:0p:white:100p', 't_lwj'],
    }).then(result => setFluid(result));
  }, []);

  return fluid ? <Image fluid={fluid} alt="Jason" /> : <p>loading...</p>;
};

Manually creating fixed images

import React from 'react';
import Image from 'gatsby-image';
import { getFixedImageObject } from 'gatsby-transformer-cloudinary/api';

export default () => {
  const [fixed, setFixed] = useState(undefined);

  useEffect(() => {
    getFixedImageObject({
      public_id: 'gatsby-cloudinary/jason',
      cloudName: 'jlengstorf',
      originalHeight: 3024,
      originalWidth: 4032,
    }).then(result => setFixed(result));
  }, []);

  return fixed ? <Image fixed={fixed} alt="Jason" /> : <p>loading...</p>;
};

API

This plugin can support both the fixed and fluid formats for gatsby-image.

Both fixed and fluid accept arguments. All arguments are optional.

Arguments for both fixed and fluid

argument type required default description
cloudName String true n/a Cloud name of your Cloudinary account, can be obtained from your Cloudinary console. This should be stored and retrieved as an environment variable.
public_id String true n/a Public ID of the image to retrieve from Cloudinary. This can be obtained from your Cloudinary account.
transformations [String!] false [] Array of transformations to be applied to the image.
chained [String!] false [] An array of chained transformations to be applied to the image.
defaults [String!] false ["f_auto", "q_auto"] Default transformation applied to the image
originalHeight Int true n/a Height of the image fetched. This is required in gatsby-image to calculate the aspect ratio of the image.
originalWidth Int true n/a Desired width of the image. This is required in gatsby-image to calculate the aspect ratio.
base64Width String false 30 Base64 width of the image.
version Boolean false false Version number of image if applicable, eg. 300124291, 1241983.
ignoreDefaultBase64 Boolean false false If this parameter is set to true, then an API call will be made to Cloudinary when resolving your GraphQL queries to fetch a base64 image regardless of whether a defaultBase64 image was provided for the image. This parameter can be overridden by the alwaysUseDefaultBase64 plugin option in environments where build speed and economy of Cloudinary usage is desired.

Arguments for fixed

argument type default description
height Int n/a The height that the image should display at.
width Int 400 The width that the image should display at.

Arguments for fluid

argument type default description
maxWidth Int Original width of the image The maximum width for fluid images.

A note about aspect ratios

You’re able to change the aspect ratio of images by supplying the aspect ratio parameter in the transformations argument.

NOTE: The aspect ratio must be supplied in the transformations array. It will not be picked up from the chained argument.

Running Tests

Run the tests once:

yarn workspace gatsby-transformer-cloudinary test

Run the tests in watch mode:

yarn workspace gatsby-transformer-cloudinary test:watch

Other Resources

Contribute

Want to contribute to make this tool even better? Feel free to send in issues and pull requests on feature requests, fixes, bugs, typos, performance lapses or any other challenge faced with using this tool.

License

MIT