React migration guide

Introduction

Cloudinary's React SDK is designed to provide a simpler and more enhanced developer experience. This guide explains how to migrate your React code from the cloudinary-react library (legacy SDK) to the latest React SDK, which includes @cloudinary/react from the frontend-frameworks library together with @cloudinary/url-gen from the js-url-gen library.

Key improvements in the React SDK:

• A new action-based syntax, designed to make building delivery URLs and transformations more logical and discoverable.
  • When compiled to the final delivery URL, each action (including any action qualifiers) represents a different component (separated by a '/'), for example: /c_scale,w_400/f_auto/q_auto/, rather than /c_scale,f_auto,q_auto,w_400/.
• Newly added autocomplete to list options and parameters and ensure only those that are supported can be used together.
• A smaller bundle size - you only need to import what you want to use.

For full documentation on using the @cloudinary/react + @cloudinary/url-gen packages in your React app, see the React SDK guide.

Key considerations

Cloudinary's React package (@cloudinary/react from the frontend-frameworks library) must be used in conjunction with the Cloudinary JavaScript SDK (@cloudinary/url-gen) to provide all of Cloudinary's transformation and optimization functionality. As such, the latest React SDK is very different from the cloudinary-react (legacy) library in its architecture and usage, so migration paths depend on your current usage of the React library.

You can use the cloudinary-react, @cloudinary/react and @cloudinary/url-gen packages in your application concurrently, so although not recommended for the long term due to the increased bundle size, you could start by integrating @cloudinary/react and @cloudinary/url-gen into your application and slowly migrate your functionality piece by piece, until you are able to remove all cloudinary-react functionality.

Installation

Install the required packages using the NPM package manager:

Migrating Cloudinary instance configuration

Using the legacy React SDK, you may be configuring your cloud name and other configuration parameters in a CloudinaryContext. This is similar to configuring these parameters in a Cloudinary instance, provided by the @cloudinary/url-gen library, in that the configuration is set once, rather than for each image or video.

For example, setting cloudName and secure in a CloudinaryContext element:

is similar to setting cloudName and secure in a Cloudinary instance:

Migrating asset instance configuration

You can also set configuration parameters in Image or Video elements in the legacy React SDK. This is similar to setting the parameters on a per asset instance.

For example, setting cloudName in an Image element:

is similar to setting cloudName in a CloudinaryImage:

Migrating delivery URLs

The Image component in cloudinary-react has been replaced by the AdvancedImage component in @cloudinary/react.

Whereas in the legacy React SDK you specify transformation parameters in the Image component, in the latest SDK they are specified in @cloudinary/url-gen in a CloudinaryImage object that you then pass to the AdvancedImage component.

Here is an example of an Image component with configuration and transformation parameters included:

There is no easy migration path from an Image component to an AdvancedImage component, but you can use the following process as an intermediate step, to create a URL that you can use as the source for a regular image tag:

1. Convert the Image component to JSON. An XML to JSON converter can help with this transition, or you may want to use a script if you have a large number of URLs to convert. The previous example would become:

2. Pass this JSON to the createCloudinaryLegacyURL function, included in the @cloudinary/url-gen library, to return a delivery URL that includes the transformations. Configuration parameters, such as cloud_name, should be included in the function call as this is simply a helper function to build the delivery URL:

3. Use this URL as the source for a regular image tag.

For all new Cloudinary delivery URLs, you should start to use the @cloudinary/url-gen syntax to create a CloudinaryImage that you can use in the AdvancedImage React component:

The resulting URL is:

Migrating advanced image components and responsive functionality

The advanced image components (lazy loading, image placeholders and image accessibility) and responsive image settings offered by the legacy React SDK, are offered as plugins in the latest React SDK.

When you have migrated your delivery URLs to use the AdvancedImage component, you can use the plugins as follows: